[Illustration: Ideal Picture of Belly River Series Time, by Deckert of
the American Museum of Natural History, New York.]
HUNTING DINOSAURS
IN
THE BAD LANDS OF THE RED DEER RIVER
ALBERTA, CANADA
A SEQUEL TO
THE LIFE OF A FOSSIL HUNTER
BY
CHARLES H. STERNBERG
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES H. STERNBERG
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
1917
THE WORLD COMPANY PRESS
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
Copyright, 1917
BY
CHARLES H. STERNBERG
_Published, March 1917_
PREFACE
My Story, “The Life of a Fossil Hunter,” published by Henry Holt & Co.,
New York, 1909, met with such a splendid reception that I am tempted
to write a second volume, especially as I have since that publication
with my three sons met with the most wonderful success among the
dinosaurs of the Red Deer river, Alberta, Canada. Since 1912 we have
been in the employment of the Geological Survey of Canada, collecting
five car loads of the ancient inhabitants of Alberta. We have found
many new genera of the duck-billed dinosaurs, those wonderful swimmers
of the old lakes and bayous of the Cretaceous period, three new genera
of horned dinosaurs, learning more about them than was ever known
before, finding that instead of being covered with bony plates as has
been supposed they had thin skins with small scales like mosaic-work;
then, stranger still, the huge plated dinosaurs completely enveloped
in an armor of bony plates, some large, and others small like chained
armor, allowing motion to the body. In fact, we are building up a great
exhibit of these strange creatures of the past. I propose to write
in the same strain as in my other book, but will take my readers to
entirely new scenes; to the richest Cretaceous fossil field in the
world; will tell of our adventures and strenuous labor in the great
gorge of the Red Deer river, 500 feet deep, and many miles in length;
of the entire process of collecting, learned by experience through so
many years of ceaseless effort; also the work of preparation in our
laboratory. In 1917 it will be fifty years since I began collecting
fossils, the rich results of the past few years are due to the
splendid work done by my three sons of whom I am justly proud, and the
assistance rendered me by the Geological Survey who have honored every
requisition I have made upon them and the results have been far beyond
my wildest dreams. No other Museum in the world, except the American
in New York, can show such collections as we have made in the last few
years. I would like to tell you the whole story. Those of you who have
read my other volume and have sent me notes of appreciation I would
like to tell you of how much assistance they have been to me, giving me
fresh courage when I have been nearly discouraged. I will illustrate
the new book with fifty original photographs showing the fossil beds,
the skeletons, or huge heads in the rock, the manner of collecting, the
work of preparation in the laboratory, and the finished specimen ready
for exhibition. We have already mounted the first duck-billed dinosaur
in Canada, it is thirty-two feet long. We secured eight skeletons of a
new form with a hooded head.
Faithfully yours,
CHARLES H. STERNBERG.
_Lawrence, Kansas._
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to acknowledge the great kindness of Dr. L. Hussakof, at that
time Curator of Reptiles in the American Museum of Natural History, New
York for reading and correcting the first ten chapters of this book,
and for his many kind words and deeds. When I offered to pay for the
trouble he wrote me “all the pleasure of being helpful in an unselfish
way would be gone if I received pay.” Dr. W. D. Matthews, Curator of
Vertebrates in the same Museum also encouraged me greatly by hoping I
would publish my ideal picture of “Ancient Giants” after reading the
chapter I sent him under that title. All the rest I am responsible for,
as I have had no assistance, and if I have published any thing that
does not please my reader I hope they will overlook it.
How can I thank the Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, and
Deputy Minister, Mr. R. G. McConnell, who has allowed me to use the
photographs taken by my sons George and Charlie, to illustrate my
pages. The text would have been dull indeed without them. Neither
can I express my thanks for his unfailing kindness to me while I was
under his authority as a member of the Survey. All the photographs
(except the Front Piece Figures 1, 2, and 3, which were sent to me
by my old friend, Dr. Osborn, President of the American Museum of
Natural History, New York. The picture of a _Portheus_, from the
London Illustrated News, the Figure of a _Tylosaur_ by my son George
F. Sternberg. The restoration of _Diplodocus carnegii_ by Mr. C. W.
Gilmore of the U. S. National Museum, and the figures 43, 44, and 45
taken last year by my son Levi) belong to the Survey. Mr. Clark in
charge of the Division of Photography developed the photographs, and
the Terre Haute Engraving Co. made the halftones. Neither can I forget
the unvarying kindness of the former Deputy Minister, Dr. R. W. Brock
who first employed me. For the great assistance he rendered me in
field and shop. For his earnest assistance to help me build up a great
collection of the Extinct Animals of Canada, at the Victoria Memorial
Museum at Ottawa, Ontario. I hope these gentlemen and all others who
have helped me to that end, will feel themselves included in this
letter of thanks.
Faithfully yours,
CHARLES H. STERNBERG.
CONTENTS
I. STORY OF A MONSTER FISH 1
II. THE TEEMING EAST 16
III. IN THE EDMONTON BEDS OF THE CRETACEOUS 33
IV. WE EXPLORE DEAD LODGE CANYON 49
V. HUNTING HORNED DINOSAURS 78
VI. PLATED DINOSAURS 90
VII. THE GREAT SPIKED DINOSAUR 101
VIII. A TRIP TO THE JUDITH RIVER 110
IX. ANOTHER STRANGE DINOSAUR 120
X. IN THE MILK RIVER COUNTRY 127
XI. THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS 134
XII. WHAT THE CRETACEOUS SEAS BROUGHT FORTH 156
XIII. THE WONDERS OF THE PERMIAN 180
XIV. CONCLUSION 200
INDEX 225
ILLUSTRATIONS
_Front._ Ideal Picture of Belly River Series Time by Deckert, of the
American Museum of Natural History, New York.
Fig. 1. “Dinosaur Mummy” found by George
F. Sternberg 4
Fig. 2. “Here the skin is preserved with its complex
arrangement of minute scales” 5
Fig. 3. In 1909 Charles M. Sternberg discovered
this magnificent Triceratops 8
Fig. 4. Portheus molossus, Cope 9
Fig. 5. Another skeleton George found, to add to
the trophies of his hunt 9
Fig. 6. Mr. C. W. Gilmore’s wax figure of his
ideal _Diplodocus carnegii_ 20
Fig. 7. A huge _Titanotherium_ 21
Fig. 8. _Trachodon annectens_, Marsh 26
Fig. 9. Traveling on Red Deer River, Alberta 27
Fig. 10. Steveville at the mouth of Berry Creek,
Alberta 48
Fig. 11. Charlie’s carnivore as he found it 49
Fig. 12. Preparing Charlie’s Carnivore 52
Fig. 13. Loading Carnivore with triplex tackle 53
Fig. 14. Quarry after Carnivore was removed 56
Fig. 15. Sternberg’s camp three miles below Steveville,
Alberta 57
Fig. 16. Skeleton of Lambe’s _Stephanosaurus_ 66
Fig. 17. Sections of _Stephanosaurus_ skeleton 67
Fig. 18. “I climbed the rugged buttes and ridges” 70
Fig. 19. Pillars cut from the solid rock 71
Fig. 20. Outlying Butte over 300 feet high 76
Fig. 21. Levi founded a crested dinosaur 77
Fig. 22. Excavation after taking out Charlie’s
_Stephanosaurus_ 82
Fig. 23. Charlie’s new _Trachodon_ 83
Fig. 24. Prepared skull of _Gryposaurus_, Lambe,
_Kritosaurus_, Brown 88
Fig. 25. The strata of clay thins out to nothing 89
Fig. 26. Discovery of George’s _Chasmosaurus_,
(_Ceratops_) 94
Fig. 27. George’s _Chasmosaurus_, lying in quarry 95
Fig. 28. Levi wrapping _Chasmosaurus_ 100
Fig. 29. _Chasmosaurus_ Quarry 101
Fig. 30. George preparing his _Chasmosaurus_ 104
Fig. 31. Skull of _Chasmosaurus_ restored by Weber 105
Fig. 32. Sternberg’s camp three miles below “Happy
Jack Ferry” 108
Fig. 33. _Styracosaurus_ in the bottom of gorge 109
Fig. 34. Top view of _Styracosaurus_, prepared by C.
H. Sternberg 112
Fig. 35. Charlie’s _Centrosaurus_ in the rock 113
Fig. 36. Putting Irons on crest of _Centrosaurus_ 120
Fig. 37. George at work on C. H. Sternberg’s
_Centrosaurus_, (_Monoclonius_) 121
Fig. 38. _Centrosaurus_, discovered by Charles H.
Sternberg 130
Fig. 39. Limb of _Gorgosaurus_, mounted by C. M.
Sternberg 131
Fig. 40. Quarry of George’s Plated Dinosaur 140
Fig. 41. Packing up a Loveland Ferry 1915 141
Fig. 42. Badlands of the Red Deer River below
Steveville 150
Fig. 43. Badlands near Steveville. Photograph by
Levi Sternberg 151
Fig. 44. Badlands near Steveville. Notice cross
bedding 160
Fig. 45. Quarry with skeleton of _Corythosaurus_
lost at sea 1916 161
Fig. 46. Charlie letting his plated dinosaur down
150 feet 170
Fig. 47. Hauling out fossil 171
Fig. 48. Urn-like Mass of Rock 180
Fig. 49. Egyptian Sphynx-like rock 181
Fig. 50. Dog Cr. Montana. Notice effects of vulcanism 190
Fig. 51. Badlands near Cow Island, Montana 191
Fig. 52. Badlands of the Missouri River 200
CHAPTER I
STORY OF A MONSTER FISH
When I wrote the preface to “The Life of a Fossil Hunter,” I little
thought of the wonderful discoveries and remarkable changes that
awaited me during the seven years that were to follow. Now, in a
reminiscent mood, I sit down to tell the readers of my autobiography,
the story of the last seven years spent in the fossil fields, or in the
laboratory preparing for study, the material that I have collected.
Two seasons my sons and I collected in the Kansas Chalk, the Lance Beds
of the old Converse County that is now named Niobrara County, Wyoming,
and in the Oligocene, of the same County. Strange to say, however,
five years have been spent in the Dominion of Canada, where, with the
assistance of my three sons, I helped build up a great collection of
the Dinosaurs of the Red Deer River, Alberta, under the direction of
the Geological Survey of Canada. The present year of 1916, with the
help of my youngest son Levi, I have been engaged in the same service
for the British Museum of Natural History. As my readers will bear
witness, in the past, I have seen my choicest treasures for forty years
leave my hands forever, to add to the glories of museums I shall in all
probability never see. When the opportunity came, however, so suddenly
and unexpectedly--the opportunity of a life time--to crown my last
days with a monument that only time’s ravages or the vandal hand of
man can efface, in that growing Dominion of the North that promises to
be one of the great countries in the boundless Western Hemisphere, it
seemed to me like a call from heaven. Though the ties of a lifetime,
nearly, that bound me to many a dear friend at Lawrence, Kansas, must
be severed. Though I must leave the protecting folds of my father’s
flag and mine, and I must live under a flag that has waved a thousand
years--under a Monarch, in fact--I, a republican of republicans! Think
of it! After three years residence in the beautiful city of Ottawa, the
capital of all the broad expanse North of the international line, after
four seasons of work among buried dinosaurs and three winters spent in
the laboratory of the Victoria Memorial Museum of Ottawa, I am free to
confess I would not have known so far as personal liberty is concerned
that I was all this time in the employ of his Royal Majesty George
the Fifth of England and ruler of the British Empire. I have learned,
I believe, that a man is as much a man amidst the snows of the Lady
of the North, under the Union Jack, as under my own beloved Stars and
Stripes. Our hopes, our ideals, our aims are much the same.
I will hurry over the first two years spent in the fossil fields of
the United States after Henry Holt and Company published “The Life
of a Fossil Hunter.” In 1910 we went to Wyoming. On Schneider Creek
my second son, Charles M., made the discovery of the most remarkable
duck-billed dinosaur the world has ever seen. The _Trachodon_ I
described in the last Chapter of “The Life of a Fossil Hunter” was the
best one that had been discovered up to that time. Professor R. S. Lull
of Yale University in speaking of the specimen George F. Sternberg had
found in 1908 says in his paper, “On Ten Years Progress in Dinosaurs,”
page 210 Proceedings of the Paleontological Society, 1912: “Impressions
of the skin of this animal (_Trachodon_ or duck-billed dinosaur), were
already known from material in Washington, and from the fragment of a
tail collected by Barnum Brown. It remained for the veteran collector
Charles H. Sternberg however, in 1908, in Converse County, to bring
to light by the aid of his three sons the most marvelously preserved
dinosaur known to (Fig. 1) science. Here the skin is preserved with
its complex arrangement of minute scales (Fig. 2) entirely bereft of
defensive armor. Together with portions of the muscles, as well as the
entire skeleton, with the exception of the hind feet and tail. This
specimen was purchased of Mr. Sternberg by the American Museum and is
now on exhibition.”
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--DINOSAUR “MUMMY.” Found by George F. Sternberg.
Page 3.]
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Here the skin is preserved with its complex
arrangement of minute scales. Page 3, 25.]
In 1909 Charles M. Sternberg discovered the magnificent skull of a
_Triceratops_, also sold to the American Museum, and mounted there.
This is the best skull of this species known, with the notable
exception of the Utterback specimen at Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh.
Charlie’s specimen was found on Seven Mile creek, two and a half miles
northeast of the McKeon Sheep Ranch. The skull was over five feet long.
The horns 33½ inches in length. The crest itself on weathering out was
badly shattered, the fragments having fallen from a perpendicular cliff
into a sandy ravine and becoming buried in the sand. Though we spent
much time in sifting the sand through our fingers, Dr. Osborn sent us
back the next year, when George and Levi Sternberg sifted tons of sand
and secured enough additional fragments to enable the preparators at
the American Museum to mount the skull in fine condition as is shown in
photograph reproduced here. (Fig. 3.)
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--1909 Charles M. Sternberg discovered the
magnificent skull of _Triceratops_ photographed by Anderson. Page 4.]
In 1910 Charlie was again remarkably successful. He found near the
head of South Schneider Creek, a finer specimen even than the famous
one mentioned by Professor Lull. How he found the specimen is well
worth the telling. He discovered a large part of the tail sticking out
of a rounded mass of sandstone; another section was in the ditch below.
I was at the time camped on the other side of the Cheyenne River, and
it took me nearly all day to return with Charlie who came after me in
our one horse buggy. It was a bitter cold evening when we reached the
locality, and in order to sleep, we built a big fire of dead cottonwood
limbs, and when we were ready to leave the fire for bed, we raked off
the coals and rolled out our bed on the warm earth beneath. We were
under a sheltering bank that protected us from the wind. The next day
the wind again blew a gale, and we stood on the bluff and swung our
picks all day in our effort to get down to the floor on which the
skeleton lay stretched out at full length. Our eyes were soon filled
with the sand we loosened with our picks; but our enthusiasm knew no
bounds, and that evening, I believe, the other boys, George and Levi
arrived with the outfit, pitched a tent and cooked us a good meal under
cover. It was a big undertaking however, to get that dinosaur out of
the quarry and haul it to the railway at Edgemont, South Dakota, 75
miles away. It took us two months and a half of tireless effort. The
skeleton had evidently sunk after death in quick sand, since the front
limbs were lifted up along the sides of the body and reversed, showing
the perfectly preserved webs that covered them. The head, and the neck
were stretched to their full length, while the hind feet pointed
downward. The animal lay on the ventral surface with the abdominal
wall spread out. The skull was four feet long. Trunk and head 12 feet
and 2 inches and the tail 5 feet and 6 inches. The entire body was
covered with skin, not clinging to the bones as in the American Museum
specimen George found in 1908, but covered as if with round muscles,
the sand having taken the place occupied by the original flesh. Owing
to the great size of the specimen, and as I was determined to save
every particle of the skin, the sections we took up were very heavy,
especially those composing the trunk, one of which weighed about 3,500
pounds. It took considerable skill and the combined strength of the
four of us to handle these huge masses of rock and bone, especially as
we had no tackle. We learned, however, that with a couple of cottonwood
poles for levers and blocks of the same for fulcrums, we could hoist a
section up, and then while the boys held it a few inches above ground
I would shovel sand under it and tamp it with my shovel handle. Of
course when they loosened their hold to take a new bite, it sank deeply
into the sand again, but still we found we had gained an inch or two.
Working thus all day we not only raised a section weighing 3,500 pounds
four feet in the air, but moved it several feet to one side so we could
run the wagon under it and load. I then came to the conclusion that
if four men with nothing but poles, blocks, and sand, could move and
handle such a heavy mass that the ancient Egyptians, with millions of
laborers and endless tons of sand, could with nothing more than such
simple tools have erected the pyramids.
The specimen when boxed weighed nearly 10,000 pounds. I sent it to
Dr. Dreverman of the Senckenberg Museum at Frankfort on the Main. I
shall never forget the effort I made to induce him to give up the
specimen, or take another in its stead. A day or two after I received
his acceptance of my offer, I received an offer from Dr. Brock of the
Victoria Memorial Museum. He wished me to mount the specimen in Ottawa,
and offered me double the price I was to receive from Senckenberg for
the unmounted specimen. But it crossed the Atlantic. The last message I
had of it, before this awful war cut off all communications, was that
the head had been prepared and it was the best of which there was any
record.
These two specimens which my party of three sons and my self have added
to science, prove conclusively that the duck-billed saurians were
great swimmers. My readers will remember that I was coming to this
view slowly. In describing the splendid specimen George had found in
1908, on page 276 of “The Life of a Fossil Hunter,” I said “I have no
doubt that the animal with lungs expanded to their full capacity often
swam across streams of water.” I was reluctantly giving up Marsh’s and
Cope’s ideas; they believed these dinosaurs lived on land, feeding off
the tender foliage of trees; and I remarked, “The animal could use the
front limbs as clumsy hands to hold down branches of trees from which
to crop the tender foliage, or banners of moss.” When I wrote those
lines I had but a single specimen to draw my conclusions from, and even
this not yet prepared, and I had little knowledge of its habitat.
Now after eight years in the cemeteries of the duck-billed dinosaurs,
with the discovery by my party of several new genera, as well as a
careful study of their environment: as recorded in the rocks in which
they lie buried, and eight months each year in the laboratory cleaning,
mending, preparing and mounting them--my vision has broadened; I have
indeed been forced by incontestible evidence to give up my old ideas
in regard to their habits and surroundings. In fact Paleontology, like
all human science--or rather scientific theories, for the actual facts
of science never change--progresses. Evidence to prove certain views
seemed conclusive to the old paleontologist; but better collections,
trained students and further knowledge prove these views inadequate
today. Entirely different views are held now, as in the case of the
duck-bills, for instance. These lived in the water instead of on land,
and consequently they had thin skin and strong paddles, or rather
webbed feet.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--I discovered five skeletons of the tarpon-like
fish, _Portheus molossus_, _Cope_. Page 4.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Another skeleton George found to add to the
trophies after big game. Page 13.]
I also discovered a wonderful deposit of figs a few rods from the
_Trachodon_ quarry. They fell in sand among teeth and bones of reptiles
and fishes, as well as the impressions of rushes and other aquatic
plants, and shell fishes. The sand packed solidly around them, and
when they decayed their form was firmly molded in the sand. The cavity
thus formed was filled with sand, and an exact cast of the figs was
produced. Until then, less than a dozen fossil figs were known to me. I
also discovered five beautiful palmetto palm leaves 18 inches in width,
showing that the country at the time they grew was like the everglades
of Florida, ridges between great marshes, through the center of which
ran sluggish streams almost at a level with the near by ocean. The
water was beyond tidewater, however, it was sweet.
In 1910 I found three _Triceratops_ skulls and George one. Two of them
went to the Senckenberg Museum to make a couple of mounted skulls for
exhibition. We also secured much _Trachodon_ material in addition to
that already mentioned, a large part of a skeleton going to the British
Museum of Natural History. George also found the most perfect specimen
of a _Trachodon_ tail I had seen up to that time. I sent it to Dr.
Marcelin Boule for the Paris Museum of Natural History.
During the winter of 1911 we were preparing a huge skull, some seven
feet long, of _Triceratops_ for the Victoria Memorial Museum. Later,
in the spring I was away, and Charlie was at work on it. One evening
he had left the shop to go home when a Kansas cyclone struck the
building and shoved one of the brick walls in as easily as if the
building had been a house of cards. The weight of the brick falling on
the skull not only crushed it so badly that it could not be restored
and had to be thrown away, but it drove the heavy tailor’s table it
was on through the floor. Mr. Constant the owner of the building saw
the storm coming and ran upstairs to shut the west window. But before
he could reach it the wall fell in and he had to run for his life up
the falling floor, and fortunately reached the steps and got out of
the building safely. Though the loss of so valuable a specimen that
had cost me much time and labor was bitter indeed, the thought that my
son had so narrowly escaped with his life made me more reconciled to
the loss. I have, as already related, both seen, and been in cyclones,
but this was the first one that ever destroyed such a valuable fossil
for me. In the same building, but farther towards the east, we had a
great fish (_Portheus_), skeleton 14 feet long. But when the floor from
above fell in, the rafters covered it in such a way that it was not
injured, and though covered with lath and plaster, it came out without
a scratch, and is now mounted in the Victoria Memorial Museum. Our
camp was visited by George’s wife and babies in 1910. We were camped
on the Cheyenne River, and it was a great comfort and pleasure to
have a woman in camp, and we soon noticed a change in the culinary
department. It seemed like home to have a daughter and grandchildren
in this desert land, and when we came in from a hard day’s work in the
fossil beds they helped make us forget our labor and our care. These
records of work in the Laramie, or rather as they are now called, the
Lance beds (from Lance Creek in the immediate vicinity), show plainly
that persistent, untiring efforts in a field (that was supposed to be
exhausted by other explorers), by trained collectors, will meet with
good results. Thirteen _Triceratops_ skulls, I believe, were recorded
by Hatcher, who with others spent years here. We not only secured six
_Triceratops_ skulls, but, what was worth far more, the nearly entire
skeletons of two trachodonts wrapped in their skins, giving science an
entirely new conception of these dinosaurs.
In 1911, I sent George to western Kansas with a party to collect in
the Chalk and with wonderful results; for though I had secured four
skeletons of the famous Tarpon-like fish of the Cretaceous, named
_Portheus molossus_ by Cope, he succeeded in finding the most complete
skeleton known to science, now mounted in the British Museum of
Natural History, in London. Mr. Pycraft, has pictured it in the London
Illustrated News for March 1, 1913. “The giant to which I refer now”
(he says), “has been dead a very long while, a million years or so
[over 5,000,000 C. H. S.]. It remains in a most extraordinary state
of preservation--will be found in the Geological Gallery. Measuring
just fourteen feet in length, it must have weighed between four and
five hundred pounds [a thousand likely C. H. S.]. It was obtained
from the chalk of Kansas, and has quite a remarkable history. It was
found by Professor Sternberg who has achieved a world-wide fame for
his discovery of fossil fish and his quite amazing skill in digging
his finds from the rock in which they are embedded. The specimen was
found [by George F. Sternberg], exposed at the surface of the ground,
and was much the worse for wear-and-tear of wind and rain and sun. But
Professor Sternberg was equal to the occasion. For just as there are
two sides to every question, so there are two sides to every fossil.
The resourceful discoverer determined to get at the other side of this
very stale fish; for the exposed side was useless. Accordingly he
covered it with a thick layer of plaster-of-Paris and when this was
set he proceeded to dig out the fossil from the bed of chalk. This
accomplished, he cut away the rock from the specimen, and eventually
succeeded in exposing the whole fish.” [The underside at least C. H.
S.] (Fig. 4.)
I have quoted Mr. Pycraft at length as he has given the facts about as
they occurred except only in giving me, instead of my son credit for
the discovery. Why did this monster fish whose remains are not only
abundant in the thousand feet of Kansas Chalk, but fragments of whose
skeletons have been found in many parts of the world become extinct?
From my long experience in the fossil beds I most surely believe that
he had his day and disappeared, as has the Moa, and Great Auk, and
many other species. I have collected redwood leaves and cones from the
Dakota Group, Cretaceous, in Kansas, and in the Upper Cretaceous of
Alberta, and Wyoming. Now however they range over a small territory
along the Coast Range of California, and their days are numbered.
Animals come on the stage of life, exist for a greater or lesser period
as it may happen, and then disappear; and the old saw “that every dog
has his day” is literally true of the past as of the present. Another
fine skeleton George found, to add to the trophies of his hunt after
big game, was a beautiful little _Tylosaur_, or ram-nosed mosasaur. It
was twelve feet long only, but was very complete indeed. This also went
to Senckenberg Museum. (Fig. 5.)
In 1911, a young man I had employed, Mr. Jasperson of Lawrence,
Kansas, found a fine skull of a _Triceratops_. Charlie prepared it in
the same region since he had taken a homestead for a ranch, married,
built himself a house, and spent the winter there, not only preparing
the skull for the Paris Museum, but in cleaning the bones of a great
_Titanotherium_, I had discovered near Seaman’s Old Ranch in the Seaman
Hills. The fall of the same year, my sons, Charlie and Levi, and I with
our assistant Mr. Jasperson, explored a new region in the Oligocene,
on Plum Creek, 25 miles North East of Lusk, Wyoming, Niobrara County,
a few miles south of the Lance Creek beds. We found an old river bed
with its flood plain exposed on either side. It was wonderful indeed
to gaze on the dry bed, that had been cemented together into solid
conglomerate, of gravel sand, water-worn fossil wood and bones, while
the old flood plains were as real, (though solidified now), as if
they were flooded, but yesterday. This flood plain had been scarred,
however, by ravine and canyon, ridge and bluff, that had bisected and
thus exposed more of the contents than in the days high water covered
it. Scattered everywhere was the richest harvest of fossil mammals I
had ever seen, before or since. On the 11th of September, I secured
the now famous skeleton of a huge _Titanotherium_, already mentioned.
George and I mounted it the next winter in the Victoria Memorial
Museum of the Geological Survey of Canada. The first great mammal to
be mounted there. It stands 6 feet high at the hips, is 11 feet long
to drop of the tail, 4 feet wide at the hips. Over the flood plain of
the ancient river bed, that cut diagonally across the country, and in
the Seaman Hills, we secured great numbers of Oreodons, a hog-like
creature that once lived in great herds. I found myself fifty skulls,
and the boys a hundred more.
A large number of these specimens were purchased by the Survey and
are preserved in the Museum at Ottawa. The Miocene (Oligocene) beds
are extensively exposed. Sculptured by wind and sand, rain and frost,
into great square towered buttes, or oblong ones topped with a thick
rock that weathers into perpendicular escarpments 20 feet or more in
height, making very pleasing scenery. Below the hard stratum, are
several hundred feet of greyish marl, some beds with more clay than
others, which weathered into small chunks of clay, that covered the
rocks, or others again disintegrated into dust. Other strata contained
considerable fine sand, greenish in color. The lowest rocks of all,
a purplish marl, rested unconformably upon the chalk of the Niobrara
Cretaceous, filled with the typical _Ostrea congesta_, an oyster shell
no bigger than a cent piece. Some of the canyons cut deeply into the
chalk, put me in mind of those in the Kansas chalk with which I was so
familiar.