They were,
however, sluggish and stupid monsters, with smaller brains even
than the Sauropods.
Such, in broad outline, was the singular and powerful family of
the Mesozoic Deinosaurs. Further geological research in all parts
of the world will, no doubt, increase our knowledge of them,
until we can fully understand them as a great family throwing out
special branches to meet the different conditions of the crowded
Jurassic age. Even now they afford a most interesting page in the
story of evolution, and their total disappearance from the face
of the earth in the next geological period will not be
unintelligible. We turn from them to the remaining orders of the
Jurassic reptiles.
In the popular mind, perhaps, the Ichthyosaur and Plesiosaur are
the typical representatives of that extinct race. The two
animals, however, belong to very different branches of the
reptile world, and are by no means the most formidable of the
Mesozoic reptiles. Many orders of the land reptiles sent a branch
into the waters in an age which, we saw, was predominantly one of
water-surface. The Ichthyosauria ("fish-reptiles") and
Thalattosauria ("sea-reptiles") invaded the waters at their first
expansion in the later Triassic.
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