.
Diplodocus rearing: Charles Robert Knight, 1911: image by Funk Monk, 2009
"...and then, in the hothouse Jurassic Age," continues the Professor, knocking his pipe against the arm of his chair, so that the ash scatters, and drifts across the room in a light haze, "the greatest of all land giants have their day...
"These benign monsters are lords of the earth for perhaps a hundred million years. Their ancestors have never experienced a blood temperature higher than that of the sea. They emerge in the blaze of the Triassic and mature in the moist heat of the Jurassic and Cretaceous Ages...
Apatosaurus: Charles Robert Knight, 1902: image by Funk Monk, 2009
"But conditions change. Because of their size they have special problems. It is wiser not to think of them as people tend to do, in terms of their sluggishness and stupidity, but, as when one is considering the defects of any species, in terms of the causes of those defects. On cool nights, the speed of messages in their nervous system slows down. To travel from the tail to the brain a neural messenger must as it were change horses at intervals along the way, it is a long and complicated voyage...
"On a cold morning in a dry volcanic valley any sufficiently audacious -- and hungry -- creature can bite off the Diplodocus' tail before the mutilated beast, only belatedly aware, has a thought to look around..."
Diplodocus hallorum ("Seismosaurus"): image by Dinoguy2, 2007
The Professor pauses a moment, gazing thoughtfully into the flickering firelight.
"In the before time things are good indeed. They are peaceful vegetarians. The male carefully observes the huge eggs his mate produces. For millennia they have been unchallenged heirs to the riches of the planet. Their young disport themselves like Olympian kittens, chasing their tails in slow motion...
"But then, the climate alters...
Hadrosaurs by a lake: Charles Robert Knight, 1897: image by Funk Monk, 2009
"They are subject to periods of excessive excitement, not months but millennia. Lacking a biological mechanism for temperature control, they develop a condition similar to schizophrenia...
"In the heat of the noonday they copulate without cease...
"In the night, as the globe continues to cool, they are gripped by increasing degrees of motor paralysis, and concurrently their vulnerability to attacks by smaller but less pacific saurians increases as well...
Two Laelaps (Dryptosaurus) fighting: Charles Robert Knight, 1897: image by Funk Monk, 2009
"Having your tail bitten off by a ravening archeopteryx is only the insult that precedes the actual injury, as the more serious adversaries begin to arrive..."
The dry crackling of the fire in the depth of the night was for a while the only sound...
"These benign monsters are lords of the earth for perhaps a hundred million years. Their ancestors have never experienced a blood temperature higher than that of the sea. They emerge in the blaze of the Triassic and mature in the moist heat of the Jurassic and Cretaceous Ages...
Apatosaurus: Charles Robert Knight, 1902: image by Funk Monk, 2009
"But conditions change. Because of their size they have special problems. It is wiser not to think of them as people tend to do, in terms of their sluggishness and stupidity, but, as when one is considering the defects of any species, in terms of the causes of those defects. On cool nights, the speed of messages in their nervous system slows down. To travel from the tail to the brain a neural messenger must as it were change horses at intervals along the way, it is a long and complicated voyage...
"On a cold morning in a dry volcanic valley any sufficiently audacious -- and hungry -- creature can bite off the Diplodocus' tail before the mutilated beast, only belatedly aware, has a thought to look around..."
Diplodocus hallorum ("Seismosaurus"): image by Dinoguy2, 2007
The Professor pauses a moment, gazing thoughtfully into the flickering firelight.
"In the before time things are good indeed. They are peaceful vegetarians. The male carefully observes the huge eggs his mate produces. For millennia they have been unchallenged heirs to the riches of the planet. Their young disport themselves like Olympian kittens, chasing their tails in slow motion...
"But then, the climate alters...
Hadrosaurs by a lake: Charles Robert Knight, 1897: image by Funk Monk, 2009
"In the heat of the noonday they copulate without cease...
"In the night, as the globe continues to cool, they are gripped by increasing degrees of motor paralysis, and concurrently their vulnerability to attacks by smaller but less pacific saurians increases as well...
Two Laelaps (Dryptosaurus) fighting: Charles Robert Knight, 1897: image by Funk Monk, 2009
"Having your tail bitten off by a ravening archeopteryx is only the insult that precedes the actual injury, as the more serious adversaries begin to arrive..."
The dry crackling of the fire in the depth of the night was for a while the only sound...
Diplodocus: Charles Robert Knight, c. 1900: image by Dudo, via Early Image Website