THE LOS ANGELES HERALD — JULY 1, 1891
At last that supposed-to-be extinct animal of which “Phoenix” wrote and Bret Harte sang—the great Gyasticutus Californicus—has been found. The HERALD received it yesterday from San Juan Capistrano by a gentleman who exhumed its remains from a pliocene bed near the San Juan hot springs, at a place appropriately named “Saints’ Rest.”
It is one of the most extraordinary bird-animals ever seen. It has a head like a wild cat, with two tusks protruding from its lower jaw. Its body is shaped like that of a wild cat but it has only two legs, tremendous ones, about twenty inches long each, and supplied with four distinct joints. The legs terminate in large flappers, showing that the animal was amphibious and made use of its enormous webbed feet to paddle its own canoe. When standing on its two feet erect, it could not have been less than twenty-eight inches in height. The face of its head gives evidence of its ferocious character. It was made to fight with its well-armed jaws.
The gentleman who sends this wonderful specimen gives it the scientific name of “Cadorus” but the HERALD is sure it is the long-lost gyasticutus, the companion of the whangdoodle that for unnumbered æons ranged in the valleys and swamps of the Pacific coast. Its habitat reaches as far north as Oregon, but there is no instance on record of it having been found beyond that latitude.
