CONCLUSION
I may begin this closing chapter by mentioning some other specimens
which I have discovered, or which my sons have, for, thank God, I have
raised up a race of fossil hunters. My second son, Charles M. Sternberg,
has in his person recently fulfilled a dream of forty years of my own,
by discovering the most complete skeleton known of Professor Marsh’s
great toothed-bird, _Hesperornis regalis_, the Royal Bird of the West.
Unfortunately the skull is missing, otherwise the nearly complete
skeleton is present, and strange to say in normal position, showing that
Dr. F. A. Lucas is right in his restoration of the Martin specimen as
mounted in the National Museum, i. e., as a loon, a diver instead of a
wader, as had been supposed. Our specimen, however, shows a much longer
neck than he had imagined. Strange indeed was this long-necked diver
with its tarsus at right angles with the body and its powerful
web-footed feet. The body was narrow, a little over four inches wide,
with a backbone like the keel of a boat. The head was ten inches long
and armed with sharp teeth. By keeping the body horizontal it could
explore a column of water six feet high and wide, for any unfortunate
fish within the zone of its activity. I would name this great loon the
Snake-Bird of the Niobrara Group. This specimen I longed to find for so
many years, but was glad to give the credit to my son. It is to be
mounted in the American Museum, and I picture it as it left my
laboratories (Fig. 41).
A word also about that great flying machine of the Cretaceous, the
flying lizard _Pteranodon_. The skeleton and a very fine skull, which my
son found on Hackberry Creek in 1906, is now mounted in the British
Museum, where my warm friend Dr. A. Smith Woodward assures me “my
specimens are greatly admired.”
Especially have I been fortunate in the Kansas Chalk where my son,
George Fryer, has charge as I write these lines of my twentieth
expedition to those beds, and where he has discovered, and safely
collected and shipped to my laboratory, a great plate of the beautiful
stemless Crinoid _Uintacrinus socialis_. I sent one section to Professor
M. Boule, of the National Natural History Museum of France, at Paris.
Hundreds of these rare animals are represented in this slab (Fig. 42).
[Illustration:
FIG. 41.—SKELETON OF _Hesperornis regalis_, THE GIANT TOOTHED-BIRD OF
THE KANSAS CRETACEOUS.
Discovered by Charles M. Sternberg. In American Museum of Natural
History.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 42.—SLAB OF FOSSIL CRINOIDS, _Unitacrinus socialis_, CONTAINING
160 CALYCES, COVERING FOUR BY SEVEN FEET.
]
Before these pages go to press, and a year after I began work on them, I
am pleased to be able to tell my readers of two noble specimens of the
Pleistocene Age I have just secured from the plains of Kansas, that
great treasure house of the animals of the past. One is a majestic
Bison, whose head towering above that of his fellows supported a pair of
horn cores measuring six feet from tip to tip. Along the curve the
distance is eight feet. The length of the head is two feet, the distance
between the horns sixteen inches, and from the center of the orbits, one
foot. These splendid horn cores were uncovered through a fortunate
chance. It seems that the Missouri Pacific Railway, wishing to shorten
the creek in the vicinity of Hoxie, Sheridan County, Kansas, cut a new
right-of-way for it across a bend. Their excavation came within two feet
of the bones buried below, thirty-five feet from the surface of the
earth; a friendly freshet washed them out, and they were discovered by
Mr. Frank Lee and Harley Henderson, of Hoxie, Kansas, June 15, 1902. I
was so fortunate as to secure them in June, 1908. I have filled them
with white shellac, and they are now in condition to be preserved
always, a specimen of the grand old bison of the Pleistocene time. Now
their burial places are three thousand feet nearer the stars than the
day they were buried there, as then the climate was semi-tropical and
the land they roamed over near sea level. The largest pair of horn cores
of a similar bison are preserved in the Cincinnati Natural History
Museum. I copy from one of their records: “The most conspicuous figure
on Plate IX, with immense horn cores, is of the long extinct
broad-fronted bison. This specimen, by far the finest of its kind in
existence, is the greatest prize in the Cincinnati Museum. It was found
in 1869 on Brush Creek, Brown County, Ohio, and through the efforts of
Dr. O. D. Norton it was acquired by the Museum in 1875.” It gives me
great pleasure to show my readers a photograph of the Kansas form that
measures along the curve of the horn cores a foot and a half more than
the famous Ohio specimen. (Fig. 43.)
The great Columbian Elephant, whose jaw I illustrate and have still in
my possession, represents one of the largest, or the largest, of its
kind ever discovered. It was found near the town of Ness City, in Ness
County, Kansas. This giant lived at the same time the great Bison
existed. The last molars have pushed out the worn premolars and the
other two molars, and occupy the entire jaw, having a grinding surface
of 5 × 9 inches. The lower parts of the teeth flare out like a fan, and
measure twenty inches along the top of the roots. The greatest
circumference of the jaws is 26½ inches, and the length 32 inches.
Unfortunately, the articulations are worn away, likely by rolling in
some river bed. I secured this noble representative of American
Elephants in June, 1908 (Fig. 44).
[Illustration:
FIG. 43.—SKULL AND HORNS OF GIANT BISON FROM HOXIE, KANSAS.
Spread of horn cores six feet, one inch; length along curve, eight
feet.
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 44.—JAW OF COLUMBIAN MAMMOTH, _Elephas columbi_.
Discovered in Ness County, Kansas.
]
How rich are the strata that compose the earth’s crust only a fossil
hunter can fully realize. Take, for instance, western Kansas, where the
soil beneath our feet is one vast cemetery. I know of a ravine in Logan
County which cuts through four great formations. The lower levels, of
reddish and blue chalk, are filled with the remains of swimming lizards,
with the wonderful Pteranodonts, the most perfect flying machines ever
known, with the toothed bird _Hesperornis_, the royal bird of the West,
and the fish-bird _Ichthyornis_, with fish-like biconcave vertebræ, with
fishes small and great (one form over sixteen feet long), and huge
sea-tortoises. Above are the black shales of the Fort Pierre Cretaceous,
thousands of feet of which are exposed in the bad lands of the upper
Missouri. In this formation the dinosaurs reign supreme. Still higher
are the mortar beds of the Loup Fork Tertiary, where the dominant type
changes from reptiles to mammals. Here, in western Kansas, are found
great numbers of the short-limbed rhinoceros, the large land-turtle,
_Testudo orthopygia_, several inferior tusked mastodons, the
saber-toothed tiger, the three-toed horse, and a deer only about
eighteen inches high. Higher still, where the grass roots shoot down to
feed on the bones, are the Columbian mammoth, the one-toed horse, like
our species of to-day, a camel like our South American llama, and a
bison far larger than the present species.
The living bison has become almost extinct itself, through the agency of
man. And in the layer of soil which covers all these formations, an old
arrowhead and the crumbling bones of a modern buffalo give an object
lesson in the manner in which these relics of the earlier world have
been preserved. So races of animals, as of men, reach their highest
state of development, retrograde, and give place to other races, which,
living in the same regions, obey the same laws of progress.
My readers will be pleased, I am sure, to know that just before these
pages go to press I am permitted to tell the story of our last great
hunt in Converse County, Wyoming, during July, August, and September,
1908, for the largest skull of any known vertebrate, the great
three-horned dinosaur, _Triceratops_ (Fig. 45). Only thirteen good
specimens are known to American museums, 7 of which are in Yale
University Museum, and were collected, I believe, by J. B. Hatcher. From
his field notes Mr. Hatcher has made a map of this region with crosses
to indicate the localities in which skulls have been found, and 30 are
so indicated, but I soon learned that he noted broken and poor material,
as well as the more perfect. With my three sons I entered the region
with enthusiasm on the hunt for one of these skulls for the British
Museum of Natural History.
[Illustration:
FIG. 45.—THREE-HORNED DINOSAUR, _Triceratops_ sp.
Restoration by Osborn and Knight. (From painting in American Museum of
Natural History.)
]
[Illustration:
FIG. 46.—DUCK-BILLED DINOSAUR, _Trachodon mirabilis_.
Restoration by Osborn and Knight. (From painting in American Museum of
Natural History.)
]
I was not employed by that institution, but the agreement was, in case I
secured a good specimen, it was to go to them. I must acknowledge I felt
rather dubious when Dr. Osborn of the American Museum wrote me that he
had had parties in these beds four years, searching without success for
a specimen. For weeks and weeks we four examined every bit of exposed
rock in vain. The rock consisted of clay and sandstone, the latter both
massive and cross-bedded. Scattered through the great deposits of
sandstone were peculiar-shaped masses of very hard flinty rock, with the
same physical characteristics but with superior hardness. These added
strange forms to the land sculptury. Almost every form the mind can
imagine is found here, from colonies of giant mushrooms, to human faces
so startling as to secure instant attention from the observer. (Figs. 38
and 39.)
A general view of the country from an elevated butte shows many
cone-like mounds, resembling table mountains or even haystacks in the
hazy distance! As the rocks, and even the flint-like material, readily
disintegrate, the creeks that run east into the Cheyenne River soon
radiate like the rays of a fan and deeply scar the narrow divides into
rather deep canyons and narrow ravines. Perhaps a thousand feet of these
fresh-water beds, are laid down in a basin surrounded, on all sides, by
the marine, Fort Pierre, and Fox Hills Cretaceous.
Buck Creek on the south, Cheyenne River on north and east, and a line
through the mouth of Lightning Creek would roughly give the area of the
Laramie Beds we explored. They cover about a thousand square miles. Here
in a country given up entirely to cattle and sheep ranges with but
little of the country fenced, meeting no one but now and then a lonely
sheep herder, my tribe of fossil hunters entered with bounding hope that
we might find some of these famous dinosaurs.
Here is the border land between the Age of Reptiles and of Mammals,
where mammals first appear as small marsupials. We secured several teeth
of these early mammals. Day after day hoping against hope we struggled
bravely on. Every night the boys gave answer to my anxious inquiry, What
have you found? Nothing. Often we ran out of palatable food, as we were
65 miles from our base, and did not always realize how our appetites
would be sharpened by our miles of tramping over the rough hills and
ravines. One day in August, Levi and I started in our one-horse buggy to
a camp we had made near the cedar hills on Schneider Creek. As we passed
a small exposure which I had not gone over, I left him to drive and went
over the beds of reddish shale, the remnant of an old peat-bog. I found
the end of a horn core of _Triceratops_, and further excavation showed I
had stumbled upon the burial place of one of these rare dinosaurs. How
thankful we were that after so much useless labor we had at last secured
the great object of our hunt. It will prove a beautiful skull when
prepared and mounted under the direction of Dr. Smith Woodward, Keeper
of Geology in the British Museum, where so many of my discoveries have
gone.
Unfortunately the skull was somewhat broken up, and one horn core is
missing. But one side of the face with the large horn core, the back of
the head, and the great posterior crest, seems entire, as well as large
pieces of the other side of the face, and a fine specimen will be made
of it. The total length of the skull is 6 feet 6 inches. The horn core
over the eye is 2 feet 4 inches high; while the circumference in the
middle is 2 feet 8 inches, and it is 15 inches in diameter at the base.
This was a fully matured animal. As the bony ossicles of the head
armature are co-ossified with the margin and remain as undulations more
or less sharply defined, I am inclined to believe that they are
ornaments. They might assist a little in defense but not offense.
In the mean time my oldest son, George, told me of a region he had
explored a half-mile from our camp near the head of a ravine. Here we
had found a natural cistern full of rain-water, protected from the sun
and cattle by a couple of great concretion-like masses of rock that
covered it. Over the divide where I had found the great skull, between
Boggy and the breaks of Schneider near its mouth in Cheyenne River,
George took Levi and myself. The evening before, I took the skull in to
Lusk for shipment. George pointed out a locality in which he had found a
bone-bed, where we later secured many teeth of reptiles and fishes,
scales of ganoid fishes, bones of small dinosaurs and crocodiles and the
beautifully sculptured shells of turtles, Trionyx, etc. As there was
still a tract of a few hundred yards to be explored the two boys started
to go over it, while I went to the bone-bed. They soon joined me with
the information that they had found some bones sticking out of a high
escarpment of sandstone. George had found part of the specimen in one
place and Levi another part soon afterwards. I requested George to
carefully uncover the floor on which the bones lay.
While we were taking in our skull, George and Levi ran nearly out of
provisions, and the last day of our absence lived on boiled potatoes.
But in spite of this they had removed a mass of sandstone 12 feet wide,
15 feet deep, and 10 feet high.
Shall I ever experience such joy as when I stood in the quarry for the
first time, and beheld lying in state the most complete skeleton of an
extinct animal I have ever seen, after forty years of experience as a
collector! The crowning specimen of my life work!
A great duck-billed dinosaur, a relative of _Trachodon mirabilis_, lay
on its back with front limbs stretched out as if imploring aid, while
the hind limbs in a convulsive effort were drawn up and folded against
the walls of the abdomen. The head lay under the right shoulder. One
theory might be that he had fallen on his back into a morass, and either
broken his neck or had been unable to withdraw his head from under his
body, and had choked to death or drowned. If this was so the antiseptic
character of the peat-bog had preserved the flesh until, through decay,
the contents of the viscera had been replaced with sand. It lay there
with expanded ribs as in life, wrapped in the impressions of the skin
whose beautiful patterns of octagonal plates marked the fine sandstone
above the bones. George had cut away the rock, leaving enough to give
the impression that even the flesh was replaced by sandstone, giving an
exact picture of him, as he breathed his last some five million of years
ago.
A more probable explanation, judging from the shape of the skin outline
which covers the abdomen and is sunken into the body cavity at least a
foot, is that the great creature died in the water. The gases forming in
the body floated the carcass, which was then carried by currents to the
final burial place. When the gases escaped, the skin collapsed and
occupied their place; the carcass sank head first and feet upward, the
former dragging under the shoulder as the body came to rest on the mud
of the bottom.
Quite different indeed is this grand example of extinct life from the
one restored and of which an ideal picture is given in this book (Fig.
46). In the first place, in the specimen we discovered the ribs are
expanded, the great chest cavity measuring 18 inches deep, 24 inches
long, and 30 inches wide. I have no doubt but that with lungs expanded
to their full capacity, he often swam across streams of water in the
tropical jungle in which he lived and died. Further, the front limbs are
not mere arms, that never touched the ground, but were used in
locomotion, as there are toes with hoof-bones, not so large as those of
the hind feet but with the same pattern, and a divergent thumb, that had
a round bone for its ungual. Consequently the animal could use the front
feet as clumsy hands to hold down the limb of a tree from which he was
cropping the tender foliage, or banners of moss. There were three
powerful hoofs on each hind foot.
I do not question, in the presence of this individual, which is complete
excepting the hind feet, tail and left tibia and fibula, but that the
reptile often stood erect, supporting his ponderous weight while feeding
on the leaves of the forest. But when it walked it used its front limbs
as well. A remarkable character are the countless rods of solid bone
that lay along the backbone in the flesh, and appear like ossified
tendons similar to those in the leg of a turkey. Hundreds of ossified
rods appeared, row after row, shaped like Indian beads, as thick as a
lead pencil in the center and beveled off to a small round point. It has
occurred to me that these were for defense; that when a great
_Tyrannosaurus rex_ leaped on his back, his powerful claws found no
lodgment in the flesh on account of these bony rods that could not be
penetrated. Thus our dinosaur would shake off his enemy.
* * * * *
How wonderful are the works of an Almighty hand! The life that now is,
how small a fraction of the life that has been! Miles of strata,
mountain high, are but the stony sepulchers of the life of the past.
How rapidly has the field expanded which I entered as a pioneer some
forty years ago! In 1867 I knew only five paleontologists—Agassiz,
Lesquereux, Marsh, Cope, and Leidy, with but few followers; while
to-day, Harvard, Princeton, the American, the Carnegie, the Field, and
the National Museums have all built up great collections of the animals
and plants of the past, and the number of publications on fossil animals
has reached an enormous total.
I had the pleasure of attending the meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science that met in the American Museum in New
York at the mid-winter session in 1906. Professor Osborn introduced me
to his splendid Head Preparator, Mr. Hermann, who has mounted the
skeletons of the great _Brontosaurus_, _Allosaurus_, and so many other
examples of extinct animals. Mr. Hermann was requested by the Professor
to devote all his spare time to showing me anything the exhibition and
storerooms contained, prepared or unprepared, and to do all in his power
to make my visit pleasant. I certainly felt at home in that paradise of
ancient animals, many of which I had collected for science on my own
explorations. The magnificent halls in which they are exhibited are a
wonderful tribute paid by the wealth and intelligence of the citizen of
Greater New York to science. How admirable that Mr. Jesup should use his
private fortune as the means to take from the obscurity of the private
dwelling of the late Professor Cope his great collection, to which I was
a contributor for eight years; and he has placed it under Professor
Henry F. Osborn, who with the assistance of Drs. J. L. Wortman, W. D.
Matthew, and others, has brought order out of chaos and presented in
intelligible shape not only that collection but many others from the
fossil fields of the West.
It is a glorious thought to me that I have lived to see my wildest
dreams come true, that I have seen stately halls rise to be graced with
many of the animals of the past that lived in countless thousands, and
that I have had the pleasure of securing some of the treasures, in the
shape of complete skeletons, which now adorn those halls.
I stood on Columbia Heights that same year of 1906, and my heart swelled
with pride when I looked down on that teeming metropolis and remembered
that I too was a native of the Empire State. Then I thought of my
distant prairie state of Kansas, and gloried in the thought that the
best years of my life had been spent in her ancient ocean and lake beds,
those old cemeteries of creation.
That past life, at least a very small fraction of it, I have sought to
bring before my readers with pen pictures. We have men among us who can
put their conceptions of the ancient inhabitants of land and sea and air
on canvas, and among them are Mr. Charles R. Knight, of the American
Museum, and Mr. Sidney Prentice, of the Carnegie Museum. Mr. Prentice I
knew as a boy, and he has done me the honor to assure me that my words
of counsel have done something at least toward assisting him to make the
choice of following the work not only of an artist in a paleontological
museum, but in portraying with pencil and brush the ideal pictures of
the early denizens of earth as in life. His success is shown in his
restorations of _Clidastes_. The results of Mr. Knight’s restorations of
many of the extinct animals brighten my pages, thanks to my friend
Professor Henry F. Osborn, so if I have failed in my pen pictures to
take my readers into the misty past, these brilliant restorations will
certainly have the desired effect.
I cannot hope in this short space to have given more than a passing
glance at the life of a fossil hunter. It has been one of joy to me; I
should not like to have missed making the discoveries I have made, and I
would willingly undergo the same hardships to accomplish the same
results. And if my story does anything to interest people in fossils, I
shall feel that I have not written in vain.
When I requested Professor William K. Gregory of Columbia University to
be the final reader of the manuscript of this book, “The Life of a
Fossil Hunter,” shall I ever forget his kind words? “I hope you will not
feel that you are under any personal obligations whatever, because this
slight service is simply laid upon me by the necessities of the case, i.
e., by the fact that your whole life and work have placed all
paleontologists under lasting obligations to you.” Surely “my cup
runneth over; I have a goodly heritage.” Greater than their obligations
to me, are mine to the men of science who have described, published,
but, above all, have prepared and exhibited the noble monuments of
creative genius which I have been so fortunate as to discover and make
known to the civilized world. My own body will crumble in dust, my soul
return to God who gave it, but the works of His hands, those animals of
other days, will give joy and pleasure “to generations yet unborn.”
FINIS
INDEX
_Adocus_, 77
Amphibian, Long-horned, 253
Anderson, A. E., 58
Anseres, Fossil, 160
_Aphelops megalodus_, 123
_Archælurus debilis_, 189
_Aspidophyllum trilobatum_, 19
Bad Lands, Expedition to, 61–98
Bailey, Dr., 260
Baird, Letter from Spencer F., 20
Basin, John Day, 173, 190
Batrachians, Fossil, 161
Beds, Laramie, 272
Benton, Fort, 79, 97, 98
_Betulites westii_, 30
Bison, Giant Fossil, 267, 268
Blackbird, Fossil, 161
Bourne, W. O., 58
Broili, Dr. F., 112, 234, 253, 254, 255, 258
Bromfield, Corporal, 226, 227
Brontosaurus, 78
Brouse, A. W., 101, 121, 141
Button, Mr. Lee, 157, 168, 169
Camel, Fossil, 187, 188, 242
Carboniferous, Upper, 135
_Cardicephalus sternbergi_, 255
Chalk, Expedition to Kansas, 32–60
Further Work in Kansas, 99–119
_Clidastes_, 53, 135, 280
_tortor_, 44
_velox_, 51, 53
_westi_, 135
College, Vassar, 53
Condon, Prof., 160, 161
Coots, Fossil, 161
Cope, Prof. E. D., Characteristics of, 45, 69, 74, 75, 83, 84, 89, 90,
91, 92, 93, 95, 239, 242, 243
Expedition to Bad Lands with, 61–89
Horned Dinosaurs Discovered by, 87
Letter from, 33, 142
News of Death of, 241
Speech Given by, 45
Memory and Imagination of, 75, 76
Wit of, 98, 99
Cormorants, Fossil, 160
Coulée, Grand, 175, 204
County, Converse, 270
Gove, 34, 118
Logan, 35, 38, 50, 54, 57, 60
Coyote, 211
Creek, Beaver, 138
Bushy, 234
Butte, 50
Chapman, 101
Coffee, 245, 246, 252
Cottonwood, 273
Deer, 126
Dog, 68, 77, 79, 81, 88
Gray, 250, 253
Hackberry 34, 35, 38, 107, 135, 266
Hay, 60
Indian, 241
Pine, 170
Pony, 261
Prairie Dog, 126, 127
Sappa, 120, 121, 140
Cretaceous, Life of the, 54
Crinoid, Stemless, 266
Davis, Leander, 196, 198, 202, 203
Day, Bill, 173, 178
Dayville, 189
Desert, Expedition to the Oregon, 144–169
_Diceratherium nanum_, 189
_Dimetredon_, 217, 256
Dinosaur, 77, 273
Duck-billed, 275
Horned, 87, 88
Three-horned, 270
_Diplocaulus_, 227, 257
_copei_, 254, 255
_magnicornis_, 240, 253, 255
_Dissorophus_, 242
_Dolichorhynchus osborni_, 111
Duncan, Mr., 154, 156, 158
Eastman, Dr., 114
Elephant, Columbian, 268
_Elephas primigenius_, 160
_Elotherium humerosum_, 186, 187
_Enhydrocyon stenocephalus_, 189
_Eryops_, 217, 227, 256
_megacephalus_, 251
Ficus, 23
Flamingo, Fossil, 161
Flora, Tertiary, 172
Fossils, Formation of, 258–260
Method of Excavating, 41, 42, 88, 109, 110, 130
Galyean, Frank, 230, 231, 232
Gar-pike, 253
Gorge, Picture, 173
Grebes, Fossil, 160
Gregory, Prof. William K., 280
Group, Fort Pierre, 70, 135
Loup Fork, 120
Niobrara, 50, 122
Grouse, Fossil, 161
Gulls, Fossil, 160
Hamman, George, 207, 209
_Haploscapha grandis_, 108
Hatcher, Prof. J. B., 70, 123, 133, 270
Hayden, Dr., 78, 205
Henry, Major, 229
Hermann, Adam, 58, 278
Heron, Fossil, 161
_Hesperornis regalis_, 265, 266
Hill, Mr. Russell, 101, 141
Hill, Smoky, 109, 113
Holland, Dr. W. J., 115
Hollick, Dr. A., 21, 22, 26
Horse, Three-toed, 126, 188
Howard, General, 191, 196, 197
Hoxie, 267
Huff, Joe, 170, 177
_Ichthyornis_, 269
_Inoceramus_, 135
Isaac, J. C., 47, 48, 61, 65, 74, 79, 80, 81, 83, 86, 93, 94, 98
Island, Cow, 79, 87, 89, 91, 98
Long, 132, 134
Klamath, Fort, 142, 146
Knight, Charles R., 279, 280
Knowlton, Dr. F. H., 24
_Labidosaurus_, 256, 257
_hamatus_, 253
Lacoe, R. D., 24
Lake, Fossil, 158
Silver, 148, 149, 154
Leaves, Formation of Fossil, 28, 29
Preparation of Fossil, 25, 26
Lesquereux, Dr., 19, 21, 22, 23, 24
Lizard, Fin-backed, 227, 234
Flying, 266
Loosely, George, 148, 152, 158
Loup Fork Beds, Discovery of the, 120–143
Lucas, Dr. F. A., 265
Lynx, Canadian, 211
_Lysorophus tricarinatus_, 258
Macbride, Letter from Prof. T. K., 27
Mammoth, Columbian, 260
Teeth of Columbian, 134
Skull of Hairy, 160
Marsh, Prof. O. C., 32, 77, 87, 129, 133, 173
Marsupials, 272
Martin, H. T., 112
Mascall, Mr., 178, 179, 190, 191, 193
Mastodon, 123, 125, 127
Jaws of, 124, 125
Matthew, W. D., 279
Menette, Major J. F., 222
Merriam, J. C., 165
Miocene, Upper, 131
_Monoclonius_, 87
_crassus_, 87
_sphenocerus_, 87
Mosasaur, 27, 50, 204
Mountains, Bear Paw, 97
Judith River, 85
Mudge, Prof. B. F., 32
Museum, American, 57, 78, 187, 188, 189, 234, 243, 250, 266, 278, 279
British, 51, 125, 267, 271, 273
Cambridge, 123
Carnegie, 53, 54, 59, 115, 117, 133
French, 266
Harvard, 137
Munich, 112, 234, 244, 262
National, 134, 265
Princeton, 133
Roemer, 51
Senckenberg, 118
Yale, 133
_Myledaphus bipartitus_, 78
_Mylodon_, 161
_Naosaurus_, 227, 234, 235, 236
Ness City, 268
Newberry, Dr. J. S., 21
_Oreodon_, 177, 189
Osborn, Prof. H. F., 51, 57, 112, 115, 243, 257, 271, 278, 279, 280
Osborn and Lambe, 77, 78
_Otocœlus_, 242
Overton, Mr., 128, 129
Owl, Fossil, Great Horned, 161
_Paratylopus sternbergi_, 188
_Pariotichus_, 257
Peccary, Fossil, 189
Permian, Expeditions in the Texas, 230–243
_Phœnicopterus copei_, 161
_Platecarpus_, 46, 51, 52, 53
_coryphæus_, 50, 204
_Pogonodon platycopis_, 202
_Portheus molossus_, 54, 57, 58
Collecting a Specimen of, 55, 56, 57
Description of, 59, 60
Prentice, Sidney, 53, 279
_Protophyllum sternbergi_, 18
_Protostega gigas_, 114, 115, 116, 117
_Pteranodon_, 266
_Pythonomorpha_, 44
Quarry, The Sternberg, 125, 126, 131
Theory of Presence of Fossil Animals in, 131, 132
Rattlesnake, 210
Raven, Fossil, 161
Rhinoceros, 123, 133, 134
Bones of, 127, 128, 138
Skull of, 189
River, Expedition to the John Day, 170–204
Loup Fork, 120
Soloman, 34, 121
Sprague, 149, 151
Rocks, Monument, 36, 46, 116
Russ, Will, 129
Salamander, Great, 217, 227, 251
Fossil, 240
Sandstone, Concretions of, 15
_Sassafras dissectum_, 19
Sassafras, Fossil Leaves of, 18
Seymour, 249
Shark, Cretaceous, 113
Shufeldt, Dr., 160, 161, 162
Sill, Fort, 220, 226
Sloth, Fossil, 161
Snow, Prof., 104
Springer, Mr. Frank, 117, 118
Sternberg, Charles H., Adventure on a Cliff, 182–184
Adventure with a Norther, 214
Buffalo Hunting, 6–9
Dangerous Ride, 96
Discovery of the Texas Permian, 230–233
Experience with a Cyclone, 121
Finding a Fossil Lake, 158
Narrow Escape from Death, 72, 73
Setting a Dislocation, 140, 141
Wild Ride through Bad Lands, 89–92
Writing “Pliocene Man,” 159
Sternberg, Charles M., 263
Sternberg, George, 109–111, 118, 171, 246, 252, 255, 256, 262, 273, 274
Sternberg, Levi, 272, 274
Swan, Fossil, 160
_Teleoceras fossiger_, 134
_Testudo orthopygia_, 122, 138, 269
Texas, Expedition to Permian of, 205–229
In the Red Beds of, 244–264
Tiger, Saber-toothed, 137, 202
Tortoise, Sea, 114
_Trachodon_, 77
_mirabilis_, 275–277
_Triceratops_, 270, 273
_Trilophodon campester_, 123, 124
_Trionyx_, 77
Turtle, Land, 121
Sea, 77
_Tylosaurus_, 51
Ram-nosed, 49
_Tyrannosaurus rex_, 277
_Uintacrinus_, 118, 119
_socialis_, 117, 266
University, California, 165
Harvard, 205
Iowa State, 50
Kansas State, 51, 111, 135, 112
Oregon State, 160
Yale, 77
Valley, Sican, 151, 153
_Varanosaurus acutirostris_, 254
Village, Deserted Indian, 163–165
Von Zittel, Dr. Carl, 113, 244
Letter from, 247, 248
Walla Walla, Fort, 170
Water, Alkali, 41
Desert, 211–213
West, Judge E. P., 30, 135
Whelan, Pat, 214
Whitaker, Governor, 160, 162
Wichita, Big, 209, 212, 227, 230
Williston, Dr. S. W., 49, 50, 53, 111, 112, 113, 144
Woodward, Dr. A. Smith, 266, 273
Wortman, Dr. J. L., 134, 171, 188, 279
Wright, Mr., 140, 218
_Zeuglodon_, 57
E. RAY LANKESTER’S EXTINCT ANIMALS
By Prof. E. RAY LANKESTER, F.R.S., Keeper of the Natural History
Department of the British Museum, Author of “The Advancement of Science”
and “A Treatise of Zoölogy.” With numerous illustrations. $1.75 net; by
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An interesting book by a high authority, based on a course of his
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than technical.
E. RAY LANKESTER’S THE KINGDOM OF MAN
“Nature’s Insurgent Son”; “The Advance of Science—1881–1906”; “Nature’s
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A readable and pictorial survey, brief but nevertheless accurate, of the
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_H. I. Brock in a three-column notice in the New York Times Saturday
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power by a conservative scientist who believes man soon able to
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very small compass and presents sharply to the layman an immensely
impressive set of facts and ideas.
* * * * *
⁂ If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will
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HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
34 WEST 33d STREET NEW YORK
THE AMERICAN NATURE SERIES
In the hope of doing something toward furnishing a series where the
nature-lover can surely find a readable book of high authority, the
publishers of the American Science Series have begun the publication of
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new series shall stand on a par with its famous predecessor.
The primary object of the new series is to answer questions which the
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=AMERICAN INSECTS=, by VERNON L. KELLOGG, Professor in the Leland
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=BIRDS OF THE WORLD.= A popular account by FRANK H. KNOWLTON, M.S.,
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by FREDERIC A. LUCAS, Chief Curator Brooklyn Museum of Arts and
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=REPTILES AND BATRACHIANS=, by LEONHARD STEINEGER, Curator of
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How to propagate, develop, care for and depict the plants and animals.
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=NATURE AND HEALTH=, by EDWARD CURTIS, Professor Emeritus in the
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=THE LIFE OF A FOSSIL HUNTER=, by CHARLES H. STERNBERG.
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=THE SHELLFISH INDUSTRIES=, by JAMES L. KELLOGG, Professor in
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=CHEMISTRY OF DAILY LIFE=, by HENRY P. TALBOT, Professor of
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=DOMESTIC ANIMALS=, by WILLIAM H. BREWER, Professor Emeritus in Yale
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=THE CARE OF TREES IN LAWN, STREET AND PARK=, by B. E. FERNOW,
Professor of Forestry, University of Toronto.
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_Already publisht_:
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=FISH STORIES=, by CHARLES F. HOLDER and DAVID STARR JORDAN.
_Arranged for_:
=HORSE TALK=, by WILLIAM H. BREWER.
=BIRD NOTES=, by C. W. BEEBE.
VI. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
A Series of volumes by President JORDAN, of Stanford University, and
Professors BROOKS of Johns Hopkins, LULL of Yale, THOMSON of Aberdeen,
PASIBRAM of Austria, ZUR STRASSEN of Germany, and others. Edited by
Professor KELLOGG of Leland Stanford, 12mo. 5⅛ × 7½ in.
* * * * *
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY, NEW YORK
January, ’09.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.