Water Reptiles of the Past and Present (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Water Reptiles of the Past and Present

In many respects the internal structure of the amphibians of the present time is widely different from that of reptiles, though there can be no doubt that the early amphibian ancestors of the modern toads, frogs, and salamanders were also the ancestors of all living and extinct reptiles, and it is a fact that the living amphib ians differ more from some of the ancient ones than those early amphibians did from their contemporary reptiles. Discoveries in recent years have bridged over nearly all the essential differ ences between the two classes so completely that many forms can not be classified unless one has their nearly complete skeletons. We know that some of the oldest amphibians, belonging to the great division called Stegocephalia, were really water-breathers during a part of their lives, because distinct impressions of their branchiae, or water-breathing organs, have been discovered in the rocks with their skeletal remains, but we are not at all sure that some of the more highly developed kinds were not air-breathers from the time they left the egg; indeed, we rather suspect that such was the case.

We are also now quite certain that, from some of the early extinct reptiles - the immediate forbears probably of the great dinosaurs - the class of birds arose, since the structural relation ships between birds and reptiles are almost as close as those between reptiles and amphibians.

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