United States or Angola ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There are indeed many reasons for thinking that a southern continent, rich in living forms, once existed. One such reason is the way in which struthious birds are, or have been, distributed around the antarctic region: as the ostrich in Africa, the rhea in South America, the emeu in Australia, the apteryx, dinornis, &c. in New Zealand, the epiornis in Madagascar.
So great a magnitude was at first a cause of incredulity; but the subsequent discovery of the bones of the Moa or Dinornis of New Zealand, proved that, at a much later time, there had been feathered bipeds of even larger bulk, and the credibility of the Ornithichnites Giganteus has accordingly been established.
New Zealand has no indigenous mammalia, but in their place great cursorial birds with but rudimentary wings. Exactly the same thing is found by geology in its tertiary and post-tertiary strata: nowhere a mammal, but gigantic birds with rudimentary wings, down to the dinornis, which probably died out in man's time.
Then there is the Palapteryx, of which remains have been found in New Zealand, which was seven or eight feet in height. But the one which to my mind is the real counterpart of the opmahera is the Dinornis gigantea, whose remains are also found in New Zealand. It is the largest bird known, with long legs, a long neck, and short wings, useless for flight.
There seems to be strong reason to believe that modern civilization is guiltless of one or two sins of extermination which have been committed in recent ages. Now Zealand formerly possessed several species of dinornis, one of which, called moa by the islanders, was larger than the ostrich.
That noon, as he sat opposite his wife at table, he said, "Marian, I want you to look out of the window about a quarter past one, and you will see a rara avis." "Goodness! Henry, you're not having any of those horrid dinornis things brought to the house, are you?" He laughed.
Within a few centuries the greater birds, the Dinornis and Epiornis, as well as the interesting Dodo, have vanished from the southern isles which they inhabited. In the century to come we can foresee that this process of effacement of the ancient life will go on with accelerated velocity. It seems inevitable that man should play the part of a destroyer.
New Zealand and the neighboring islands are relics of this great land." In the Corrio Mountains in New Zealand, at a height of nearly 4,921 feet above the sea-level, have been found flints shaped by the hand of man, associated with a number of bones of the Dinornis, the largest known bird.
One form is exemplified by the ostrich, rhea, emeu, cassowary, apteryx, dinornis, &c. These are the struthious birds. Now birds and reptiles have such and so many points in common, that Darwinians must regard the former as modified descendants of ancient reptilian forms.
In the fossils of the Post-pliocene period in this same island, there is the like absence of kangaroos, opossums, wombats, and the rest; but in their place a prodigious number of well-preserved specimens of gigantic birds of the struthious order, called by Owen Dinornis and Palapteryx, which are entombed in superficial deposits.
Word Of The Day