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Updated: June 13, 2025
There was a time when huge bird-like reptiles were the lords of creation, and after these had been "sealed within the iron hills" there came successive dynasties of mammals; and as the iguanodon gave place to the great Eocene marsupials, as the mastodon and the sabre-toothed lion have long since vanished from the scene, so may not Man by and by disappear to make way for some higher creature, and so on forever?
On adjacent flats and slopes grow survivals from one of the most ancient of all plants a Cycad, that botanical paradox, combining some of the characteristics of the lie palm and of the pine with the appearance of a tree-fern, while being of distinctive order, which flourished during the age when the Iguanodon and the Polacanthus and other monstrous and ungainly reptiles roamed the land.
As the members waited they grew chilly, although it was only autumn, and a fire was lighted, which threw a cheerful shine upon the varnished skulls, urns, penates, tesserae, costumes, coats of mail, weapons, and missals, animated the fossilized ichthyosaurus and iguanodon; while the dead eyes of the stuffed birds those never-absent familiars in such collections, though murdered to extinction out of doors flashed as they had flashed to the rising sun above the neighbouring moors on the fatal morning when the trigger was pulled which ended their little flight.
By referring to what was said of the Iguanodon of the Wealden, the reader will perceive that the Dinosaur was somewhat intermediate between reptiles and birds, and left a series of tridactylous impressions on the sand. To determine the exact age of the red sandstone and shale containing these ancient footprints, in the United States, is not possible at present.
We stand agape in the British Museum, looking at the monstrous skeletons of the mastodon, megatherium and iguanodon, and conclude that all the great animals thirty feet long and eleven feet high are extinct.
He described also the iguanodon and the pterodactyl two of the first of the wonders which they had encountered. He then thrilled the assembly by some account of the terrible carnivorous dinosaurs, which had on more than one occasion pursued members of the party, and which were the most formidable of all the creatures which they had encountered.
It wearily dragged itself down to the edge of the pool, and looked backwards to the Kangaroo and Dot, who called out "Good-bye" to it. Its eyes were dim with tears, for it was still thinking of the Iguanodon and Ichthyosaurus, and of the good old days before the Flood. "It breaks my heart to think that they are all fossils," it exclaimed, mournfully shaking its head.
It was one of the smaller members of that terrible family of carnivorous dinosaurians which ruled the ancient cycad forests as the black-maned lion rules the Rhodesian jungles to-day. The massive iguanodon which fled before it so madly, though of fully thrice its bulk, had reason to fear it as the fat cow fears a wolf.
The calcareous sandstone and grit of Tilgate Forest, near Cuckfield, in which the remains of the Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus were first found by Dr. Mantell, constitute an upper member of the Tunbridge Wells Sand, while the "sand-rock" of the Hastings cliffs, about 100 feet thick, is one of the lower members of the same.
It wearily dragged itself down to the edge of the pool, and looked backwards to the Kangaroo and Dot, who called out "Good-bye" to it. Its eyes were dim with tears, for it was still thinking of the Iguanodon and ichthyosaurus, and of the good old days before the Flood. "It breaks my heart to think that they are all fossils," it exclaimed, mournfully shaking its head.
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