THE MARCH OF THE MASTODONS
Almost two years to a day from the time that the sand-storm struck
the caravan on its way home from Ghizeh, Mr. Hunt, the old merchant,
looked up from his morning mail at the breakfast table and said to
his son:
“Perry, your Uncle George is back from Patagonia. He writes me from
Washington that he has had a marvelous trip in a long search for a
still-living specimen of the giant ground-sloth and that he will come
out here to pay us a visit.”
“When’s he coming, Father?”
“In about two weeks, he says.”
“My word! I wish I could get that Pteranodon mounted before he comes!”
“Well, can you?”
The boy thought for a moment.
“I might be able to, at that. You know, Father, that Pteranodon of
ours is going to be far and away the best Pteranodon in any museum
in this country. The American Museum of Natural History in New York
will envy us. I wondered, when you bought the specimen from that
Kansas chap, that you didn’t send it to New York.”
“I wanted to give our own little museum a start,” the old merchant
replied, “and it seemed to me that if it had on exhibition at least
one thing that was the best of its kind in the world, that exhibit
would help its reputation more than anything I knew. I figure that
the Pteranodon will put our local museum on the map.”
“It sure will,” agreed Perry.
“How are you getting along with the mounting of it?”
“Mighty well, I think,” the boy answered, “seeing that I’m doing it
nearly all alone. But I’d never have been able to tackle it so well
if you hadn’t invited Antoine here last summer. He taught me more
about preparing museum specimens in a month than I’d have found out
from our chaps here in a year. Why don’t you come over and see it
now, Father? I’ve got all the plaster off, and the bones are laid out
on a table ready for setting together.”
“Very well, I’ll go with you now,” the merchant said, looking at his
watch. “I’m quite keen to see how the thing shapes up. After all, I
bought those bones on faith. I haven’t even looked at them yet.”
“It’s a crackerjack,” the boy assured him, “the best that’s ever been
got hold of. We’re all tickled over it. The skeleton is pretty well
cleared away from the chalk rock now, and I’m having heaps of fun
making the model.”
“If you can manage to get the mounting of the Pteranodon finished,”
his father rejoined, as they stepped into his car, “I’d be glad. I’d
like to have it ready to show your Uncle George when he comes.”
In response to questioning about flying reptiles from his father,
Perry, during the ride, chattered steadily about pterodactyls of
every shape and size, until they stopped at the Museum building. The
boy took his father to the top floor, which was used as a workshop.
Running along one whole side of the building was a long table, and
there, spread out upon it, were a number of blocks of pinkish chalky
stone. None of these blocks was more than a couple of feet long, and
most of them were only a few inches in length, but from each of them
protruded a brown substance which, on close examination, displayed
itself as bone. The merchant looked at the fragments with interest,
but also with a puzzled air.
“Is that all there is to it, just those little bits of stone?” he
asked.
“Why, Father, what did you expect?”
“I thought you had almost a whole skeleton! That collector fellow
told me there were very few bones missing.”
“There aren’t many of them lost, as a matter of fact,” the boy
responded. “No, really, Father, it’s a bully specimen.”
“It doesn’t look it.”
“Wait just a second,” the boy rejoined, “and I’ll show you!”
He hurried to another part of the workshop and came back with a
curiously shaped frame on which was stretched a piece of brown
oiled-silk.
“What’s that?”
“One of the wings for the model,” the boy answered. He laid the frame
down upon the table over the blocks that contained the bones, and,
as though by magic, the whole shape of the great Pteranodon seemed
to spring into view. The missing bones presented themselves to the
imagination as though they were there, for the spread of the wing
showed exactly how they would fit in. A group of little claws, that
had been chiseled entirely free from the chalk, were carefully placed
by Perry at the ends of the wing-fingers.
“So that’s what he looked like!” exclaimed the old merchant.
“I can give you a better idea yet. Hold on a bit,” said Perry, and he
hurried away again. Back he came, carrying in one hand the companion
wing, and in his other hand a wax model of the head and towering
crest of the great flying reptile. As soon as this latter was placed
beside the scattered array of bones on the table that represented the
skull, their relation to each other was shown at once. Perry then
laid the other wing on the table, the two great brown membrane-like
wings stretching their whole spread of twenty-one feet, and making it
seem as though that giant of the air had just glided down upon that
workshop table.
“Great guns,” said the financier, “what a monster!”
“Doesn’t that give you an idea of his size, though!” exclaimed the
boy.
His father looked thoughtfully at the bones of the skeleton lying
embedded in the pieces of Kansas chalk in which they had been found,
and at the model with its semi-transparent wings that lay upon it,
and said thoughtfully:
“It’s too bad we couldn’t make an entire hall, Perry, containing
huge life-size models of all the kinds of trees that lived at
that time, with perhaps a cliff and sea-shore and a few of those
Pteranodons—models of course—flying around. I believe in that way
people would get the idea of archaic life much more easily than they
would from specimens in a glass case.”
“Oh, Father!” cried the lad excitedly, and stopped.
“Well?”
“It would be bully,” the boy agreed, “but you’d need such miles of
space! The tree ferns would have to be a hundred feet high, and the
cliff two hundred feet, so as to get the perspective right; the hall
would have to be a couple of hundred feet square, and we’d need a
different hall for each of the important periods.”
“About how many?”
“Seven or eight, I should think.”
The old merchant shook his head.
“I’m pretty well fixed,” he said, “but I couldn’t stand for anything
like that. Those halls would cost half a million apiece.”
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History._
INTO THE HEART OF MEXICO.
Museum expedition leader in the Tree Cactus Country.]
[Illustration: CARRYING SHELL OF GLYPTODONT
Eight Mexican peons bearing armor of giant armadillo.]
“If you wanted to, Father—” the boy began, and stopped.
“Well?”
“You can get pretty nearly that effect by making models on a small
scale, say, an inch to the foot. Then the tree ferns would be ten
feet high, the Pteranodons would be two feet and all the other
animals would be to scale. If you worked in the perspective and did
the lighting the way that it’s done on the stage, people could get
almost the same effect as by a big hall.”
The merchant looked thoughtfully at his son.
“That’s a good idea of yours, Perry,” he said.
“It’s not my idea,” the lad rejoined, “there’s a chap who’s worked it
out for the Children’s Museum in Brooklyn and the Metropolitan Museum
in New York. His stuff is great!”
“I wouldn’t mind spending a little money for a thing like that,” the
financier answered. “Models like the ones you’re talking about are
just what the small museums ought to have.”
“Big ones, too,” put in Perry.
“Of course. But a considerable part of the funds of the larger
museums must be spent on expeditions and scientific work on a broad
scale. That’s their main work. But in order to get the public
interested—which I think is an important part of a museum’s duty to
the people—that model idea catches me about right. Why don’t you have
that fellow come on and spend a couple of days with us? I’ll see that
it’s worth his while.”
“I’ll ask him like a shot, if you’re willing,” Perry replied. “I’d
enjoy it heaps! I’ve never had more fun than I did last summer when
you asked that American Museum artist down here. Jumping Jehu,
couldn’t he paint!”
“Yes,” his father agreed, “when it comes to restorations of fossil
monsters, he’s about the best ever. You picked up quite a bit about
painting from him, too.”
“I certainly did. And I’d like to know a little more about
modelling,” the boy added shrewdly, well knowing that his father was
always willing to help him in every way.
“All right, then, Perry, if you want to drop a note to that
sculptor-modeller, go ahead.”
The financier started to go and then turned back.
“I’ve been thinking about the missing parts of that Pteranodon,” he
said. “Don’t you suppose, Perry, that the rest of those bones ought
to be somewhere around? If I sent the collector another check, do
you think he could dig around and find some more? I’d like to see
that skeleton absolutely complete.”
The boy shook his head.
“I don’t believe it would be any use, Father,” he said. “You see,
that Pteranodon was found in chalk.”
“Well?”
“That means that he must have died and tumbled into the water and
sunk to the bottom. The floor of the sea is pretty flat, especially
when it’s made up of those microscopic shells floating down, so that
the bones, when they reached the bottom, must have been spread out on
a level. They’re too light to sink in much, and as the chalk shells
steadily rained down, they covered the old monarch of the air like
a sheet. Then the bottom of the sea rose and became dry land. When,
millions of years later, and probably not long ago, rain and wind and
all the rest of the things that make erosion, washed away the chalk
that had accumulated on top of the Pteranodon, he lay there just as
flat as ever, flatter, because his hollow bones were crushed by the
chalk that once had lain on top of him.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said the merchant thoughtfully, “the bones would
be on a level.”
“Sure. So if the collector who found those bones cleared away a space
a little larger than the spread of the Pteranodon, say a stretch
thirty feet square, and worked that down to a level, he’d really be
looking at the bottom of the ocean as it was when the Pteranodon sank
down. If he explored that stretch for a few inches further down, he’d
certainly find all the bones he would be likely to find, for even an
inch of chalk would mean a thousand-years’ deposit.”
“That may be all right, son,” said his father, “and you’ve made a
good case for the collector. But just the same, the bones must be
somewhere.”
“Sure, but where? See, right here, Father,” and the lad put his
finger on the skeleton, “there’s the place where the sternum ought to
be, one of the biggest bones of the whole Pteranodon. It wasn’t found
at all. Yet you’d think that the biggest bone would be the easiest to
find.”
“That’s just what I’m saying. It must be somewhere. A bone from a
dead bird can’t get up and walk off by itself.”
“No, but a big primitive fish or a crab, or something, could have
pulled away the bone when making his dinner on the dead Pteranodon
at the bottom of the sea. Anyway, it’s a rare thing when there aren’t
some bones missing in a fossil. In the Fayum, it used to seem to me
an awful shame that the skeletons were so often broken up into little
bits. But we had to take them as they came.”
“You’ll make up the rest of the skeleton in plaster, I suppose?”
“That’s nearly done, Father,” the boy replied. “But we’re not going
to take the skeleton free from the chalk and mount it.”
“Why not?”
“Couldn’t be done successfully. As I was telling you, the bones are
crushed. See, Father, a Pteranodon’s bones are hollow, like a thin
pasteboard tube, and the pressure of the overlying chalk has squashed
them flat, and splintered them. It would be an awful job to rebuild
that tubular bone. No, we’re going to chisel away the chalk for about
an inch below the level of the bones, soaking them meanwhile in
shellac until they won’t absorb any more and cementing together the
pieces that are cracked and broken. Then we’ll make a plaster model
of the whole base, fitting in the bits of chalk we have, and we’ll
color that pink like the rock in which the bones were found. On that
model, which will be exactly to scale, we’ll be able to see exactly
where the missing bones come and we’ll mold them on the model. We’ll
color them slightly different from the true bones, so that an expert
can see right away which are the restored parts, but the public will
get the idea of the beast as a whole.”
“And your restoration will be of wax?”
“We’ve got a regular composition for that, and I’m molding it over a
steel frame so as to give it strength. Then I’ll paint it up to look
as much like life as possible.”
“How do you know what color to paint it?” queried his father. “There
wasn’t any artist in existence to take notes when Pteranodon was
flying around.”
“No,” Perry replied. “But there isn’t any reason to suppose
Pteranodon was in bright colors and a blackish-brown is the usual
thing in Nature, so I’m going to make it that.”
“Where are you going to put the exhibit?” queried the old merchant,
as he went to the door.
“Right in this main hall,” the boy answered. “It’s our biggest prize,
thanks to you, Father, and we’re going to make the most of it.”
His father laughed at the lad’s confident manner.
“I hope you occasionally consult the Director,” he said. “You talk
for all the world, Perry, as though you were the only person in the
building.”
The boy colored to the roots of his hair at the implied rebuke of
boasting.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said, “but—but I have got the sort of idea
that the Pteranodon is my pet, and they’ve let me work it all out,
almost by myself. The Director’s in and out all the time, of course.”
With the goal before him of having both the skeleton prepared and
also the model finished and hung before the arrival of his uncle,
Perry worked night and day. The director of the small museum helped
him, for he too was anxious to have the museum’s richest treasure
on display before the coming of Dr. Hunt. Between them, they
accomplished wonders, and the day before the expected visit of the
scientist, the skeleton of the Pteranodon was safely affixed against
the wall of the main hall, while above him, swooping downwards, was
the 21-foot model of the giant flying reptile. He looked every inch
his size, and the actual bones themselves, immediately below, showed
how exactly true to reality was the restoration that had been made.
When, next day, his uncle came, Perry could hardly restrain his
impatience until a visit to the Museum had been arranged. He was
proud of his work, as proud in completing the preparation of the
skeleton and the model as he had been when, one evening two years
before, in the red sand of the Eocene river bed in Egypt, he had
shown his uncle the skull of the Moeritherium. But, at the same time,
he was a little anxious, for the director of the local museum, though
a scholar, was not an expert in paleontology.
The lad was on pins and needles, therefore, when, with his father and
his uncle, the car slowed up at the Museum. Perry led them into the
main hall and pointed to the wall.
“There!” he said.
The professor cast a quick glance at the model overhead, but, as
Perry knew well, it was not the restoration, but the actual skeleton
itself that interested the scientist and he walked up to the case.
Carefully, with an examination of details that amazed Perry, for
even he did not realize how much importance might attach to a small
groove in a joint, the scientist scrutinized every bone, and every
fragment of the plaster.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co._
PTERANODON, CLIMBING FOR A SWOOP.
The great flying reptile, twenty-one feet long, clawing his way up
the cliff to get a start for his soaring flight; restoration from
Gregory, in “Geology of To-day.”]
“Excellent,” he said heartily, “excellent piece of work! Very well
handled indeed, Perry. You’ve got a real specimen there, and the
preparation is first class.”
The director, who had hurried out of his office on the approach of
the car, heard the last couple of sentences and smiled at the boy.
“Of course,” the professor continued, “there are one or two small
points, quite small points, that I think might be changed.”
“What?” queried Perry.
“That crest, for one thing,” the scientist replied. “There is every
reason to think that the Pteranodon developed that large crest
sticking out the back of his head as a balance. As the genus grew
in size, the toothed beak of the Pteranodon became longer in order
to enable him to get food easily. Judging from the bones of his
neck, which you see are small, Perry, it is unlikely that he could
have carried heavy enough muscles to support the one-sided weight
of a heavy jaw, and the crest acted as a balance. Now, you have the
crest standing up from the skull at an angle of forty-five degrees.
That would put more weight on the top of the skull and diminish the
balancing effect. If you draw a straight line along the upper jaw to
the skull and project that backwards, you will have the right line
for the crest.”
“So that’s why he had that crest!” exclaimed Perry. Then turning to
the director, he added, “Mr. Thompson, neither of us thought of that
reason, did we?”
“Then,” continued the professor, “I think you have the stretch of
the wings a little too straight. The wing-finger of nearly all the
Pterodactyls was curved.” He also mentioned one or two smaller
matters, but turning to the director of the local museum, concluded:
“I think, Mr. Thompson, if you will make those trifling changes, you
will have in your Museum here without question the finest specimen of
a Pteranodon extant.”
“Very well, Dr. Hunt,” the director answered, “I’m obliged for the
suggestions. I think I’ll let Perry carry them out, since you think
he’s done so well so far.”
“He has done a first-class piece of work,” the scientist said, quite
enthusiastically, “one that would do credit to any museum. If you’ll
let me have a photograph, Perry, and the exact dimensions of all the
bones, I’ll write a short scientific paper on it and give you the
credit for the restoration, under Mr. Thompson’s direction.”
“Oh, Uncle George,” he said, “that would be great, but it was Mr.
Thompson who showed me what to do.”
“No,” remarked the director, “Dr. Hunt is speaking of the
restoration, and I let you go ahead on that in your own way. If Dr.
Hunt writes a paper on it, the credit for the restoration is all
yours. Mounting the skeleton, of course, is a different matter.”
The scientist was distinctly pleased with the lad’s work and reverted
to it more than once in the course of the day. At the same time, the
genuine scientific interest shown by the professor in the Pteranodon
was grateful to the old merchant, who, as he said himself, had bought
the bones “on faith.”
The third day of Dr. Hunt’s visit, at dinner, the scientist turned to
his nephew and said quite unexpectedly:
“Perry, do you know the famous poem about the Eohippus?”
“No, Uncle George,” the boy replied. “I don’t believe I do.”
“You are acquainted with our little friend, the Eohippus, I suppose?”
Perry grinned.
“In books and in bones,” he said, “but I haven’t ever met him in real
life.”
Then, for he never missed an opportunity of trying to persuade his
uncle to take him on another expedition, he added:
“I’d be awfully glad to meet him, though, Uncle George, if you’re
going to pay him a visit.”
“I am,” the scientist replied. “But if you don’t know that little bit
of verse, which was written by a clever and quite well-known woman
after a visit to our New York Museum, part of your education as a
paleontologist has been seriously neglected, and I’m going to make up
for that neglect at once.” And, without further preamble, he began:
“There was once a little animal
No bigger than a fox,
And on five toes he scampered
Over Tertiary rocks;
They called him Eohippus,
For he certainly was small,
And they thought him of no value
When they thought of him at all;
For the lumpish old Dinoceras
And Coryphodon so slow,
Were the heavy aristocracy
In days of long ago.”
“Except that the Dinoceras didn’t live at the same time as the
Eohippus,” put in Perry, “he came along later.”
“Poetic license,” replied his uncle. “I didn’t write the verse. Shall
I go on?”
“Oh, sure!” answered Perry eagerly.
So his uncle continued:
“Said the little Eohippus,
‘I’m going to be a horse!
And on my middle finger-nails
To run my earthly course!
I’m going to have a flowing tail,
I’m going to have a mane,
I’m going to stand fourteen hands high,
On the psychozoic plain.’”
“He got away with it, too,” commented Perry, “but I don’t wonder that
the Coryphodon couldn’t see it coming.”
“Not only couldn’t he see it coming,” said his uncle, “but the poet
represents him as being quite annoyed about it.” And he continued:
“The Coryphodon was horrified,
The Dinoceras was shocked,
And they chased young Eohippus,
But he skipped away and mocked;
Then they laughed enormous laughter,
And they groaned enormous groans,
And they bade young Eohippus
Go view his father’s bones.
Said they, ‘You always were as small
And mean as now we see,
And that’s conclusive evidence
That you’re always going to be.’
‘What! Be a great, tall, handsome beast,
With hoofs to gallop on?
Why, you’d have to change your nature!’
Said the Loxolophodon.
They considered him disposed of
And retired with gait serene,
That was the way they argued
In the early Eocene.”
“Loxolophodon isn’t early Eocene, either,” protested Perry. “It’s a
bully rhyme, Father, but it has got scientific kinks.”
“How?”
“Well, take the line, ‘On five toes he scampered.’ Eohippus didn’t
have five toes, if I’ve got it right. I know when I stopped at New
York, on the way home from that great trip we had in the Fayum, I
spent over an hour in that alcove of the horses in the American
Museum, and I’m just as sure as I can be that the Eohippus skeleton
they exhibited there had only four toes on the forefeet and three on
the hind feet.”
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History._
FINDING THE EOBASILEUS.
Haystack Mountain, in the Bad Lands of Wyoming: the museum explorer
is standing at spot where the skeleton was discovered.]
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History._
THE EOBASILEUS OR LOXOLOPHODON.
A four-horned amblypod (blunt-feet) the largest and last of his race,
of which vast herds roamed over the United States three million years
ago.]
The scientist looked across the table at his brother.
“We’re going to make a paleontologist out of this chap after all, I
believe,” he said. “Now, Perry, was there any horse earlier than the
Eohippus?”
“There’s one awfully like Eohippus that they found in the London
Clay,” the boy answered. “Let’s see if I can remember what he’s
called? He isn’t a ‘Hippus’ anything!”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Hyra—Hyratherium,” he said at last.
“Hyracotherium,” the scientist corrected him, shaking his head.
“That’s it. But I could never quite make out, Uncle George, whether
he was much different from Eohippus. He didn’t have five toes, did
he?”
“No one knows,” was the answer. “Some of these days we may find a
complete skeleton of Hyracotherium in that big stretch of clay under
London, but, so far, there’s only a skull known. Personally, I think
he’s the same as an Eohippus. Of course there are rudiments of the
fourth and fifth toes on the hind feet of that type. But was there
ever a true five-toed horse?”
“I don’t know.”
“It seems to me,” said his uncle, “that you’d better come along with
me and try to find out. I don’t know, either.”
Perry almost jumped from his chair.
“Oh, Uncle George,” he said, “you’re going off on another expedition!”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Wyoming.”
“And am I going?”
“That’s for your father to say. I’d like to have you along.”
The lad looked appealingly to the old merchant at the head of the
table. The latter caught his son’s look and smiled.
“I think we’ll have to let the boy go with you, George,” he said, “if
it’s only to give us a rest. I pledge you my word that there’s been
so much paleontology talked in this house ever since Perry came back
from that Egyptian trip, that half the time, when a bird comes on
the table at dinner time, I hardly know whether I’m carving a modern
chicken or an Archæopteryx.”
The scientist smiled broadly.
“In that case,” he said, “you’d better let him come with me.”
“Oh, Father,” cried Perry, “can’t I go?”
The boy’s mother began some protest from the other end of the table,
but the old merchant paid no heed.
“Yes,” he answered thoughtfully, “I don’t see any reason why you
shouldn’t go.”
Perry wriggled in his chair with eagerness.
“Uncle George,” he began excitedly, “when are we going to start? And
just whereabouts in Wyoming are we going? And what are we going to
look for? And—”
The professor put up his hand in protest.
“Easy, easy there, Perry,” he said. “I’ve a lively remembrance of
what you’re like when you start asking questions. Spare me now. I’ll
take a walk with you after dinner and you can spring anything that
you want to know, then.”
Accordingly, as soon as the meal came to an end—and Perry had never
thought a dinner could seem so long and slow, he handed his uncle his
hat and the big ironwood stick that the professor always carried,
grabbed his own cap and half-pushed him out of the door.
“Now, Uncle George,” he said. “Please, quick, tell me all about it!
When are we going to start?”
The professor took out his watch with an assumption of intense hurry
and consulted it.
“The last Eohippus sank quietly to sleep about two and a quarter
million years ago,” he said, “and somehow I seem to think that he’ll
stay there and wait for us a little while longer. But of course, if
you’re in such a tremendous rush—”
“Please don’t joke, Uncle George, I really want to know when we’re
going to start. I’d like to make those corrections on that Pteranodon
that you told me about before I go, any way.”
“You can probably do that,” the scientist replied. “I had planned to
start for the west in a couple of weeks.”
“Whereabouts?”
“I want to correlate some horizons,” was the reply.
The boy looked puzzled.
“You don’t see what I mean?” the professor asked.
“I don’t, quite,” the lad replied.
“Well, Perry, I want to visit three or four points in Wyoming where
different strata of rock are exposed, working from the Upper Eocene
downwards. You remember, at the Fayum, there were rocks belonging to
the Oligocene Period right up at the top of the cliff, Upper Eocene
on the next layer, Middle Eocene where we had our camp, and Lower
Eocene down near that Birket-el-Qurun lake?”
“You bet I remember,” said Perry, “why, Uncle George, just for fun I
made myself a model of it.”
“Good thing to do, it’ll help you to remember. Now, in the States we
haven’t any one place where all these various strata show up clearly
one above the other, with great ledges exposed for exploration
and working, as they are in the Fayum. But, all over Wyoming, in
different valleys and at different parts of the Bad Lands, there are
these same strata exposed for miles and miles. At one place, Perry,
such as the Washakie formation, where I’m going first, all the rocks
deposited since the time of the Upper Eocene Period, have been washed
or weathered away, so that the Upper Eocene layers are exposed. It’s
a Bad Land country, too, where the rocks are soft, where there is no
fertile soil and no steady rainfall. So, when the cloudbursts come,
the rain eats easily into the soft rocks and carves them into buttes
and ravines. The sand-bearing winds cut them away still further,
so there are hundreds of thousands of square feet exposed to the
weather and erosion is always going on.”
“Gee, what a chance!” cried Perry. “Why, you could go over a country
like that every year and find something.”
“You can travel over it after every rainstorm or windstorm, for
that matter. Then, after I’ve spent a day or two at the Washakie,
I’m going to the Bridger Bad Lands. They’ve been cut down a little
further, so that all the Upper Eocene has been eroded and the Middle
Eocene is exposed. So you see, Perry, in the Washakie formation we
have a chance of finding the fossils of animals that lived in the
Upper Eocene Period; and, a few miles away, in the Bridger Bad Lands,
we can find the fossils of half a million years earlier. Then, in
the Wasatch, there are two places I’m going to visit, the Wind River
Valley and the Gray Bull River country; the Wind River exposes the
top of the Lower Eocene Rocks and the Gray Bull the bottom layers.
Then, if I can get time, I’ll go to New Mexico, where there has been
more erosion and the rocks are cut away down to the Basal Eocene,
and, after that, I plan to come back to Wyoming for the famous
Laramie formation, which is cut down to the Cretaceous Period, or
the Age of Chalk, and which has been our great hunting ground for the
Dinosaurs.”
“My Pteranodon was from the Age of Chalk.”
“Certainly, Perry, but it was from a marine formation, earlier than
the Laramie. You see the Cretaceous Ocean covered Kansas, but did not
cover Wyoming. I want to make an exact map of the relations of these
strata to each other so as to show clearly the way in which the rocks
were laid down and to give a continuous picture of the life of the
animals that lived during those times. You know well, Perry, that
I’m always more interested in fossils for the sake of the ideas of
primitive life that they give, than for fossils themselves.”
“Same here,” said the boy. “And where are we going to strike first,
Uncle George? You said the Washakie formation. Whereabouts, at
Haystack Mountain?”
Again the scientist looked approvingly at his nephew.
“You’re really doing quite well, Perry,” he said. “What made you
think of Haystack Mountain?”
“I’ve been interested in Eocene deposits ever since that Fayum
trip,” the boy replied, “and I found out that Haystack Mountain
was the same age as the beds we worked in Egypt, where I found the
Moeritherium. That’s sort of made me feel that Eocene fossils were my
particular end.”
“Do you expect to find another Moeritherium in Wyoming?”
“No, of course not. The Moeritherium isn’t found anywhere except in
Africa. You said so.”
“Are the elephants found anywhere else?”
“Oh, sure. They went everywhere.”
“Why didn’t the Moeritherium go everywhere?”
“Because—because; oh, I suppose, Africa wasn’t connected by land with
Europe or Asia. Yes, that’s right. Africa was an island in the Eocene
Period.”
“How about Zeuglodons, then? Would you find them in Haystack
Mountain? The fact that Africa was an island wouldn’t matter to
primitive whales.”
Perry rubbed his forehead in perplexity.
“I’ve a feeling,” he said slowly, “that there aren’t any there, but
why?” He thought for a moment, then catching sight of a twinkle in
his uncle’s eye, a sudden thought struck him. “Why, of course not,”
he said, laughing at himself, “that’s inland. We’ve got Zeuglodons
in the marine Eocene deposits in Florida.”
“I was wondering,” his uncle said, “if you were going to have whales
walking all over the land. I just wanted to remind you that you’ve
got to think of the conditions of the deposit as well as the age.
One other thing, Perry. If, during the Eocene Period, Africa was an
island, do you suppose America was connected with Europe and Asia or
not?”
“N—no,” answered Perry doubtfully. “I think probably not. If it was a
time when the land was depressed in Africa, it probably was depressed
here.”
“Then if Africa had her own types of animals, like the Moeritherium,
that we didn’t have, you might expect us to have some types that
Africa and Europe and Asia didn’t have.”
“Like the giraffe-camels?”
“Exactly,” the professor agreed, “like the giraffe-camels. But in
later deposits, the types mixed. Now, Perry, if you think you really
want to come with me, you can either join me in three weeks at the
Museum Camp near Haystack Butte, or you can join me a few days
earlier and go with me to the Loup River formation in Nebraska. It’s
on the way, and the Museum received a letter the other day from a
ranchman, who seems to have found a fine specimen of the Columbian
mammoth. They want me to go and look it over. I thought you might
like to see a mammoth embedded. As I understand, this chap has had
the sense to leave the skeleton untouched, so it may be in good
shape.”
“I’d awfully like to go there,” said the boy, “but I do think I
ought to finish up the Pteranodon first, and it’ll take me all of
two weeks. I’ll join you out at Haystack Butte, if I may. I’d like
to go with you to see that mammoth, though, ’cause I’ve never seen
one really in the ground. And just what sort of a beast was the
Columbian Mammoth, Uncle George? I’ve never got clearly in my head
the differences between a mastodon and a mammoth.”
“It’s a thing you ought to know,” his uncle said, “particularly as
you found the Moeritherium for us. You remember the Paleo-mastodon
skull that Antoine found the night before you made your discovery,
don’t you?”
“Of course!”
“And you remember that while the Moeritherium skull was found in an
Upper Eocene bed, the Paleo-mastodon skull was found in a lower
Oligocene.”
“Of course.”
“And you just now told me that Africa was an island during the Eocene
period and that it gradually rose, making land bridges across the
Mediterranean during the later Oligocene.”
“Yes,” Perry agreed.
“Very good. Then, when the land bridges were made, and the mammals
from Africa first had the chance to make their way into Europe and
Asia and so on to America, the ancestors of the elephants were a
little more advanced than Paleo-mastodon. That’s clear?”
“Quite.”
“And so you might find the descendants of Paleo-mastodon in Europe
in the Miocene Period, after the land bridges were made, but not
earlier.”
“Yes, I see.”
“That’s exactly what happened. In the Lower Miocene of Europe is
found the Trilophodon or four-tusked Mastodon. The European form is
older and less developed than the four-tusked Mastodon of America,
but the little fellow traveled from Africa to China, going through
Arabia, and from Africa to Florida by way of the Behring Straits
land bridges. They weren’t straits, then, of course.
“So, in that warm corner of Africa, the elephants slowly began to
develop until the time of Paleo-mastodon and later, going on their
own way without any interference from others. They managed to defend
themselves from the creodonts and, little by little, developed trunks
and tusks. Then came the land opening into Europe and Asia, and, like
a stream bursting through a dam, the four-tusked Mastodons scattered
to the four corners of the earth, trumpeting as they went.
“They grew more and more powerful. Soon the little four-tusked fellow
decided to give all his attention to the development of his upper
tusks and to let the lower ones go. One type, which we call the
Beaked Mastodon, had a short jaw and his lower tusks turned down. It
wasn’t a very good arrangement and his kind became extinct. The other
two types are distinguished by a difference in the teeth—”
“Teeth again!” exclaimed Perry.
“Exactly. One had four crests on the second molar, the other had
three, but it was the three-crested type that had the first success
and the three-crested style that led to the modern Mastodon. The
first big Tertiary two-tusked Mastodon, who is called Dibelodon, had
the three-crested tooth, and he spread everywhere. All the South
American Mastodons were of his race.
“Meantime, another of the family decided to develop the lower tusks,
instead of the upper, and they stuck downwards at right angles to the
lower jaw. If you can imagine an exaggerated walrus tusk effect, only
coming from the lower jaw, instead of from the upper, you can get
some idea of it.”
“What a queer-looking brute! What would be the use of tusks like
that?”
“For roots,” his uncle replied. “It worked fairly well, for the
family succeeded for a long time, too. The biggest specimen of
Dinotherium, which was found in Roumania, was bigger than the largest
Mastodon. But the Dinothere didn’t have the real emigration spirit.
So far as we know, he never came to the New World.
“At last came the true American Mastodon, developed from the
three-crested tooth type. He lived during the Age of Man. Primitive
Man hunted the Mastodon and the Mammoth, and has even left pictures
of the chase engraved on reindeer horn. When you stop to consider the
crude types of stone weapons that Man used at that time, it looks
like long odds against the Man. Yet the Mastodons have all gone from
the earth and Man remains.”
“There were living Mastodons not so long ago, weren’t there, Uncle
George?”
“Quite recently,” the professor answered, “but the stories you hear
about Mastodons having been seen within historic times are untrue.
Still, their skeletons are never deeply buried. They are generally
found in bogs and swamps. A great many have been found in New York
State and their fossil remains are plentiful all over the Middle
West. You know that big swamp about twenty miles south of here?”
“You mean Jackson’s Bog?”
“Yes.”
“Sure. I’ve often gone after wild duck, there.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were Mastodons in that
swamp. I don’t mean for shooting purposes,” and the professor
laughed, “but buried there. Some of these days, if the swamp is
drained, possibly many Mastodon skulls and tusks will be found. The
animals swarmed all over this part of America. One skeleton, even,
which was found in New York State, was so well preserved that
masses of golden-brown hair were found still attached to the withered
skin.”
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History._
THE AMERICAN MASTODON.
The ancestor of the modern elephants; note the extreme heaviness of
body and the sloping head. The mastodon was heavier than the modern
elephant, though not as tall.]
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History._
THE SIBERIAN MAMMOTH.
A near relative of the Indian elephant, and like the mastodon, a
contemporary of Primitive Man. Note the greater height due to length
of limb, the thicker and coarser hair, and the straighter shape of
skull; the tusk formation, also, is characteristic, and longer than
in modern elephants.]
The boy looked eagerly to the southward over the countryside.
“You’d like to go and start digging in Jackson’s Bog right now,
wouldn’t you?” his uncle asked.
“Yes,” Perry answered with a laugh, “I would. I never thought that
there might be a Mastodon so near home.”
“You don’t have to get far away from home to do fossil hunting,” his
uncle reminded him. “I remember once I was talking to a group of
young fellows in New York, bright working lads, and one of them said
to me:
“‘Oh, Professor, if only those Wyoming-Texas places you talk about
weren’t so far away! I’d mighty well like to do something like
fossil-hunting on Sunday afternoons and holidays, but there isn’t any
chance.’
“‘Nonsense,’ I said to him, ‘there are the Palisades, right across
the river from your home. You can get there for a nickel and a half
an hour’s ride. I miss my guess if that isn’t a good fossil-hunting
ground.’
“Less than a month after that, Perry, the famous skeleton of a
Phytosaurus was taken out of those very rocks.”
“By one of those chaps?”
“By a group of Columbia College boys,” was the reply. “They were
interested in geology and had gone over there one Saturday to do a
little field work ‘on their own.’ Getting hungry, they sat down on a
flat rock to eat lunch, and while lunching, one of them noticed some
brownish stain on the rock. Half idly, he said:
“‘This looks like a vertebra!’
“One of the others laughed, but the third, examining the stains,
suggested:
“‘It might be bone, at that. Let’s take a bit home and find out!’
“But when they tried to chip it out they found the bone as hard
as the rock. Still, they got a small piece and tested it in the
laboratory for phosphate, because they knew that if the sample were
rich in phosphate it must have come from some living thing. Sure
enough, they found phosphate and decided it was bone. They telephoned
to the Museum, and as soon as our men went to the find, we recognized
at once that it was part of a skeleton. We chiseled away the rock
and found what became known as the ‘Fort Lee Reptile.’”
“And it was a Phytosaurus?” the boy asked. “What does a Phytosaur
look like?”
“There were a lot of different Phytosaurus, Perry, but most
of them resembled crocodiles, though more lizard-like than a
modern crocodile. The Fort Lee specimen was christened _Rutiodon
Manhattanensis_, and it’s the only one of that kind ever found.”
“Wasn’t that great for those college chaps!” exclaimed Perry.
“Any one, trained or untrained, can find fossils,” the scientist
reminded him. “I tell you, Perry, there’s not a corner of the United
States from which a fellow couldn’t drive to a fossil-bearing
locality, and not many places where a fellow couldn’t reach fossils
in a day’s walk.”
“You mean big beasts like the giant reptiles?”
“Not only those, of course. No. I’m speaking about fossils of all
ages. For example, the Fort Lee Reptile was of the Triassic Period,
Perry, so you see he belongs to a long time ago.
“In some places, the rock deposits are marine, and one might find
fossil fishes. Some rocks were deposited near great forests and one
might only find fossil leaves and ferns, with, perhaps, primitive
insects something like dragon-flies, called _Meganeura_, a foot and a
half long. In many places the rocks hold sea creatures from five to
fifteen million years old. If every youngster in the United States
would look around for fossils when he got the chance, we’d probably
find more new species in a year than we find now in ten years.
“I wish I had the opportunity that school-teachers have in country
schools! There isn’t a little red schoolhouse in all the country that
couldn’t have a splendid local museum, if only the boys would get
together.”
“I’ll get a gang together just as soon as I get back,” cried Perry.
“Do that,” said the professor, “tramp the banks of streams and
railroad cuttings, everywhere that the soil has been cut away. First
thing you know, you’ll drop on some rare prize that science might
never have heard of otherwise.”
“All right, Uncle George,” said the lad, “I’ll remember that and I’ll
see if I can’t get a Mastodon for our little museum out of Jackson’s
Swamp. How about a Mammoth? Could I get one there, too?”
“Not so likely,” was the scientist’s answer. “The Mammoth only
came south with the ice sheet. He was distinctly a winter-loving
beast. That’s why we have better fossils of the Mammoth than of any
creature. Explorers have found him mummied and almost whole, the
entire carcass frozen stiff and preserved with the hide and flesh.
Two complete specimens were found in Siberia and only a few years ago
(1908) one of our museum men secured the larger part of a carcass,
with hide and hair, from the edge of the frozen tundra in Alaska.”
“What’s the difference between Mammoths and Mastodons?”
“Teeth,” was the succinct reply. “The Mastodons had chopping teeth,
the Mammoths had grinding teeth. You can tell them apart at once. The
tusks of the Mastodon were more often straight, those of the Mammoth
frequently curved inward.”
“Which was the bigger?”
“The biggest of the Mastodons was heavier than the biggest of the
Mammoths, but more stockily built. The Mammoth was taller. The most
imposing of them all was the Imperial Mammoth of North America,
thirteen feet six inches at the shoulder, with huge incurving tusks.
But if it came to fighting, I would place my faith on the American
Mastodon.”
“A scrap between those two would be worth watching,” cried Perry, his
eyes sparkling.
“They wouldn’t be likely to meet,” said his uncle; “one lived in the
north on the frozen plains, the other preferred warmer climates and
forested lands.”
“Talking of fighting, I was in the Museum the other day,” said Perry,
“when a terrific thunderstorm came up, and it got almost as dark in
there as if it were night. A terrific flash of lightning came, and
in the blaze, I had a sudden start, as though one of the skeletons
had moved. The crash of thunder that followed seemed like a thousand
beasts roaring all together. And I had a quick feeling of wonder as
to what would happen if all those monsters should suddenly become
alive and start ructions with each other.”
“It would be exciting, certainly,” said the professor.
“I’d want my camera,” rejoined Perry eagerly.
“Would you?” said the professor. “I’d run!”
[Illustration: _Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History._
THE MAMMOTH TUSK HE FOUND.]
[Illustration: _Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History._
UNCOVERING A FROZEN MAMMOTH.
Scene on Museum expedition to Alaska, where, near Eschscholtz Bay,
a carcass was found, with some skin, masses of hair and wool,
and of flesh and fat preserved. Note heavy mosquito veil worn by
excavator.]