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arms. The two-thumb, three-finger construction was the same on both its hands and feet. |
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The most intriguing aspect, however, was what appeared to be the creature's respiratory system. There was no apparent nose, but there was a series of flapped vents at the side of the head which seemed to be some sort of filtering device for the air it breathed. There were eyes (at least that's what they appeared to be) and a slitlike mouth a full 15 inches across. Old man Palmer had pried the beast's mouth open with a wooden block to reveal three rows of razor-sharp incisors, each row progressively more savage looking than the row that preceded them. |
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The skin was blackish brown in color and incredibly coarse; it had a sandpaper-abrasive quality. B.C. likened it to the skin of a shark. I happily went along with her assessment only because I have never been and never intend to get close enough to a shark to know enough to debate the issue. |
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Where there was hair, it was more like coarse bristles than what we have come to accept as normal for a wide variety of the species known as Homo sapiens. |
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It struck me that the creature looked like something caught in some kind of an evolutionary time warp, like something that was still making the transition from its vast watery world to that of the land. I shared |
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