Word: tuatara
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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Reptile Curator James Oliver of New York's Bronx Zoo is impatiently awaiting his tuatara. The scaly, sluggish beasts are so ancient a breed, he says, that their forebears flourished when the sea was full of icthyosaurs. They were stepped on by dinosaurs, and their young were probably snatched by flying, reptilian pterodactyls. Some experts believe that all modern snakes and lizards are descended from the tuatara's order (Rhynchocephalia...
...Tuataras are not only ancient, but odd. They have three eyes, one in the middle of the forehead. In humans, who may be descended, like the lizards and snakes, from something very like a tuatara, this third "pineal" eye has become the pineal gland deep inside the head. The tuatara still wears his outside, complete with a lens and an optic nerve. It may see a few dim glimmers with its third...
...tuatara is not outstandingly intelligent; its brain, only about the size of a green pea, is hardly a brain at all. When strolling leisurely, it drags its belly and tail slowly over the ground. When chasing a spider or a grasshopper, it rears up on all four legs, like an optional four-wheel drive, and makes better speed. Most of the time tuataras are silent, but during the mating season they speak to one another with froglike croaks. Their eggs, laid in petrel burrows (tuataras eat young petrels), take a year to hatch...
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