From the bleak heights of the Permian period, or--more
probably--from its more sheltered regions, in which they have
lingered with the ferns and cycads, the reptiles spread out over
the earth, as the summer of the Triassic period advances. In the
full warmth and luxuriance of the Jurassic they become the most
singular and powerful army that ever trod the earth. They include
small lizard-like creatures and monsters more than a hundred feet
in length. They swim like whales in the shallow seas; they shrink
into the shell of the giant turtle; they rear themselves on
towering hind limbs, like colossal kangaroos; they even rise into
the air, and fill it with the dragons of the fairy tale. They
spread over the whole earth from Australia to the Arctic circle.
Then the earth seems to grow impatient of their dominance, and
they shrink towards the south, and struggle in a diminished
territory. The colossal monsters and the formidable dragons go
the way of all primitive life, and a ragged regiment of
crocodiles, turtles, and serpents in the tropics, with a swarm of
smaller creatures in the fringes of the warm zone, is all that
remains, by the Tertiary Era, of the world-conquering army of the
Mesozoic reptiles.
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