The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek Part 29

"Take it by degrees," advised Professor Wright, "and remember that generally these names are made up of one or two or even more Greek or Latin words. Sometimes a Greek and Latin word is combined, but that really is not scientific.

"Now, in the case of the brontotherium, we have two Greek words which excellently describe the animal whose bones I am after. That is the description fits, as nearly as anything can to something we have never seen.

"There is a Greek word--_bronte_ it is p.r.o.nounced in English, and it means, in a sense, thunder. Another Greek word is _therion_, which means wild beast.

"Then bronto--bronto--therion must mean--thunder beast!" cried d.i.c.k, rather proud that he had thus pieced together some information.

"That's it!" announced Professor Wright. "You see how easy it is.

Change _therion_ to _therium_ and you have it."

"But why did they call it a thunder beast?" Bud wanted to know.

"There doesn't seem much sense in that," admitted the scientist, "until you stop to think that paleontologists adopted the word 'thunder' as meaning something large and monstrous, as thunder is the loudest noise in the world."

"Not so bad, after all," was d.i.c.k's admission.

"I'm glad to hear you say so," commented the professor. "To go a bit farther, take the word Dinosaur."

"I know the last end of it means a big lizard," put in Bud.

"Yes, and the front of it--the prefix _dino_, means the same thing that _bronto_ signifies--something large, terrible and fear-inspiring. Dino is a form of word taken from the Greek, _deinos_ meaning terrible and mighty, from its root _deos_, which means fear.

"So those who first discovered these great bones, having reconstructed the animals whose skeletons they formed, gave them scientific names best fitted to describe them. Can you think of anything more aptly descriptive than 'thunder-lizard,' to indicate a beast shaped like the lizards we see to-day, and yet whose size would terrify ancient man as thunder terrified him?"

The boys were really enjoying this scientific information, dry and complicated as it must seem in the way I have written it down here.

But the professor had a way of making the most dry and scientific subject seem interesting.

"What gets me, though," said d.i.c.k, "is how they know about how these big lizards and other things look when they only find a single bone, or maybe one or two."

"That is puzzling at first," admitted Professor Wright. "Perhaps I can ill.u.s.trate it for you. Take, for instance, the Dinornis--and before we go any farther let me see if you can give me a good English name for the creature. Try it now--the Dinornis."

He looked expectantly at the boys.

"Dino--dino--" murmured Bud. "That must mean--why that must mean fierce or terrible, if it's anything like Dinosaur."

"I'll encourage you so far as to say you're on the right track. In other words, you are half right," said the scientist. "Suppose you take a try at it," and he turned to d.i.c.k.

"There isn't much left," laughed the lad.

"Suppose you take it this way," suggested the scientist. "Lop off just di--and a.s.sume that Bud has used that. You have left the syllable nornis."

"Nornis--nornis--it doesn't seem to mean anything to me," sighed d.i.c.k, for he was rather disappointed at Bud's success and his own seeming failure so far.

"I'll help you a little," offered the professor. "Instead of saying di-nornis, call it din-ornis. Did you ever hear the word _ornithology_?"

"Sure!" a.s.sented Bud. "It means--_ology_ that's the science of," he was murmuring to himself. "Don't tell me now--I have it--the science or study of birds. That's what ornithology is--the study of birds."

"Correct," said the professor. "Ornis is the Greek word for bird, and when we put in front of it Di, or din, meaning fear, thunder or terror, we have a word meaning a terribly large bird, and that's just what the Dinornis is--an extinct bird of great size.

"But what I started to tell you was how we can sometimes--not always and sometimes not correctly--reconstruct from a single bone the animal that once carried it around with it. The Dinornis is a good example.

"Some years ago there was discovered the pelvic and leg bones of what was evidently an enormous extinct bird. Now, of course, our knowledge of the past is based somewhat on our knowledge of the present, and if we had but the pelvic and leg bones of, say, a crow, we could, even without ever seeing a crow, come pretty nearly drawing the picture of how large a bird it is, and of what shape to be able to use such a pelvis and such leg bones.

"So the men who reconstructed the Dinornis went at it. They set up the pelvis and leg bones and then, with plaster or some substance, and by working in proportion, they reconstructed the Dinornis, which is about the shape of the ostrich or the extinct moa of New Zealand, only larger. Here, I'll show you what I mean."

Sitting down on a pile of dirt and shale rock, excavated by some of his workers, Professor Wright, on the back of an envelope, sketched the pelvic and leg bones and then from them he drew dotted lines in the shape of a big bird like an ostrich.

"You see how it is proportionately balanced," he remarked. "A bird with that shape and size of leg would be about so tall--he could not be much taller or larger or his legs would not have been able to carry him around.

"Take, for instance, the giraffe. If you found some of their long, thin leg bones, and had nothing else, and had never seen a giraffe, what sort of a beast would you imagine had been carried around on those legs?" he asked the boys.

"Well, a giraffe is about the only kind of a beast that could logically walk on such long, thin legs," admitted Bud.

"And there you are," said the professor.

The boys were more interested than they had believed possible, and they began to look forward eagerly to the time when some of the giant bones might be uncovered.

"What gets me, though," said d.i.c.k, believing that while knowledge was "on tap," he might as well get his fill, "what I can't understand is how long ago they figure these things lived--I mean the Dinornis and Dinosaurs," he added quickly, lest the professor resent his "pets"

being called "things."

"There's a good deal of guess-work about it," admitted the scientist.

"The question is often asked--how long ago did such monsters live. But we are confronted with this difficulty. The least estimate put on the age of the earth is ten million years. The longest is, perhaps, six thousand million----"

"Six thousand million!" murmured Bud in an awed voice.

"And maybe more," said Professor Wright. "So you see it is pretty hard to set any estimate on just when an animal lived who may have pa.s.sed away six billion years ago--it really isn't worth while. All we can say is that they lived many, many ages ago, and we are lucky if we can come upon any slight remains of them."

"Do you really think you'll find some fossil bones?" asked d.i.c.k.

"I'm sure of it!" was the answer. "h.e.l.lo! That looks as if they had found something over there!" he cried, as some excitement was manifest amid a group of laboring Greasers some distance away.

The professor hurried there, followed by the boys. They saw where some men, down in a shale pit had uncovered what at first looked to be a tree-trunk.

"It is part of the hind leg of the great Brontosaurus!" cried Professor Wright, in intense excitement. "That's what it is--the Brontosaurus!"

"But you want a _Brontotherium_," insisted one of the helpers, a professor in the making.

"I don't care what I get, as long as they are fossil bones!" cried Mr.

Wright. "But I shall yet find a Brontotherium here--of that I am certain. Careful now, men!"

"Say, he's really found something!" cried d.i.c.k.

But alas for the hopes of the professor! When the object was taken out it proved to be only part of the skeleton of a long dead buffalo, the bones being so encrusted with clay or mud as to appear much larger than they really were.

"Well, too bad," sighed the professor. "But better luck next time.

Come again, boys."

And so the digging went on as fast as could be done, for each shovel of earth and each dislodged stone was carefully examined by the scientist or one of his scientific companions for any trace of the bones of an extinct monster.