IN THE EDMONTON BEDS OF THE CRETACEOUS
Having entered the Geological Survey of Canada, as Head Collector and
Preparator of Vertebrate Fossils with the assistance of my two sons,
Charlie and Levi, (George entered later), Westward we sped, and as
even the longest journey will end, we reached Edgemont, South Dakota,
and were driven to Charlie’s ranch. My youngest son, Levi, and A. E.
Easton, from Quinter, Kansas, joined us here. We drove in with our
outfit on the 18th of July. A neighbor hauling in to Edgemont the fine
skull of _Triceratops_ Charlie had prepared during the winter. This we
shipped to Dr. Boule for the Natural History Museum in Paris. It was
a remarkably cold day for this time of the year and the mercury hung
close to the freezing point. Loading team and outfit on the car and
leaving it in charge of Mr. Eastman, we went on ahead. I took a sleeper
on the night of the 19th, and woke next morning in the foot hills
of the Rocky Mountains--rugged indeed, showing snow in their darker
recesses. Part of the day we passed through the Crow Indian Reserve,
many of the Indians still living in tents. In the evening we reached
Great Falls. I walked across the bridge here, of several spans or a
thousand and fifty feet in length.
The river is swift and full of falls and rapids. We passed through much
country covered with the black alkaline shales of the marine Pierre
beds. Some exposed sections are at least three hundreds feet thick,
covered with a scanty growth of short grass. We passed a large lake,
miles in length, covered with wild ducks and other water fowls. No
trees grew along the shore.
We crossed the International Line at Sweet Grass and Coutts. Here we
noticed a change; the country is a rich loam thickly covered with
buffalo grass. We left Lethbridge on the 21st of July. This is a pretty
town, with a beautiful park that promises to be a beauty spot some day
in the near future. The country north is largely settled, I am told,
by farmers from the United States, and they are making the desert to
blossom as the rose. We could see the Canadian Rockies looming up in
the West.
At Calgary I stopped to have a row boat made and Charlie went on to
Acme. Calgary is the metropolis of Alberta. I noticed many comfortable
farm houses, fields of wheat, oats and flax, or herds of horses and
cattle. On my way to Acme I saw plenty of hay on the open prairie. They
speak of raising 120 bushels of oats to the acre and sixty bushels of
wheat. Certainly a farmer’s paradise. Our car arrived at last after
being eight days on the road. At Acme we got well acquainted with the
pest of the north, for myriads of mosquitoes made life a burden. We
were obliged to wear nets while traveling and to keep a smoke going
to protect ourselves and horses from their murderous attack when we
made camp. We took the road between Rosebud and Knee Hill Creek to
Drumheller, a small town at that time with a couple of stores. Ten days
after leaving Wyoming we arrived in the valley of the Red Deer River,
encamped three-quarters of a mile above Drumheller. On the 13th of
July we found our first dinosaurian bone of a trachodon or duck-billed
saurian. We soon began to find great numbers of loose bones piled up as
jetsam and flotsam of the sea. They were first carried out, by river
or lagoon, and at time of high tide were returned with dead seaweeds
of the ocean to clog the shore. The best localities we found were
above the river near the prairie level. They are usually preserved in
iron-stone concretions, or a bog iron covers the bones. They lie in
sandstone that has a yellow streak through it.
The valley of the Red Deer River at Drumheller is a great chasm cut
by the river four hundred feet deep into the heart of the prairie.
Across from plain to plain it is nearly two miles. Tributary creeks
and coulees have cut narrow trenches farther back into the plain while
in the main valley, especially near the brink of the prairie, are long
ridges, table lands, buttes and knolls, pinnacles and towers down whose
sides a rolling stone would bring up in a sudden halt in the waters
of the river three or four hundred feet below. All this region, except
of course the main channel and flood plain of the river, has been
transformed by nature’s sculpturing into fantastic badland scenery.
The rocks carved into the most intricate patterns entirely devoid of
vegetation, except perhaps, along the northern slope of some butte or
rounded bluff where sponge-moss and dwarf cedar and spruce with many
flowers, found a resting place. The slopes are usually covered with
cherty fragments that threaten to slip or roll under the feet and hurl
the adventurous fossil hunter into the gorge below. The canyons are
rich in coal, and now that the Canadian Northern Railway has terminals
at Calgary there is great demand for it.
The Edmonton beds are brackish water origin. On top is a great bed
of oyster and clam shells. Below the principle bone-beds are about
200 feet of greyish clay (that crumbles under the feet), interlaid
with dark shales and seams of coal. Many of the clay beds have hard
iron concretions scattered through them. As these are practically
indestructible they remain scattered over the surface, the other
material having been carried away by water. There is a bed of massive
sandstone within a hundred feet of the top, and it weathers out
into table lands. Below, the soft clays form conical mounds, often
capped with grey sandstone that is fluted by weathering. The rain
water becomes so thick with clay that it never settles but gradually
evaporates into mud.
I was interested in the study of two problems: First, the environments
of the duck-billed, horned and plated, and carniverous dinosaurs.
Second, the story of how this river has cut out of the heart of the
prairies, this great canyon 400 feet deep and over a mile wide. I find
in answer to the first question that the deposits were uniform through
a great length of time, showing that the climatic conditions and the
altitude were the same during the time the four hundred feet of strata
were laid down. Further, in order to retain the same conditions the
land subsided at the rate of deposition. The fine material of which
they are composed, showed it to be ocean mud, and the mud, accumulated
in lake or bayous, like the everglades of Florida. Swamps and bayous
were the natural habitat of the duck-billed dinosaurs, while on the
rising land were groves of redwood, sycamore, figs and other trees,
with low heavily grassed plains covered with high grass horse-tail,
rushes, etc., through which wandered the horned plated and carniverous
dinosaurs. How often in my day dreams some stately dinosaur has passed
before my mental vision! The forests, the rivers, the lakes and
oceans of those ancient days have appeared in imagination as though
they actually existed. So I ask the reader to put on my glasses:
A low country but little above sea-level, great flats near the sea
covered with high swamp grass, rushes and moss, through which meander
sluggish streams, lagoons, and bayous, often widening out into lakes of
considerable size, all receiving the high and low tides of the near by
ocean. On the rising land the giant redwoods cast their shadows across
the silent streams. They grow in fairy circles with the parent tree in
the center often, or in case she has dropped out, a hollow circle is
formed. Palms, sycamores, figs, magnolias and many other trees that
now adorn our forests thrived along the Cretaceous everglades. Such
an environment was the home of the ancient dinosaurs. They were the
rulers of land and water. There were many soft-shelled turtles in the
streams, as well as countless gar-pike and sturgeon. The scene was a
vast panorama of beauty. The sheen of the water, the salt-meadows of
living green, the dark forests moaning in the background, and over all,
the sun revolving on its western course. Perhaps our imagination has
carried us back to a bayou of the Edmonton Cretaceous. Yes! See yonder
the foam ripple off the huge back and tail of a swimming reptile,
a duck-billed dinosaur or trachodont! He is rapidly approaching
a specially seductive patch of horse-tail rushes just across the
bayou from us. The enormous head, over three feet in length, swings
gracefully on a long delicate curved neck, his front limbs, six feet
long, and hind ones eight. The front foot is elegantly proportioned
and a strong web stretches across the four fingers. The hind limbs are
pillar-like and terminate in three great hoofs with coarse web between
the three great toes to assist in swimming, and to prevent sinking
deeply into the mud of the bayou when he stopped to feed. The great
trunk, projecting half way above the water, and the enormous tail over
fifteen feet long. This tail he uses with great effect to hurry him to
his pasture ground. It dashes the water into foam as we have already
seen. The whole body is covered with a thin skin in which are arranged
like mosaic-work small polygonal scales or small tubercles, ornamented
with larger scales arranged in rosettes. The whole in parallel rows
glowing pattern blends harmoniously with the reeds and rushes near the
shore. See how the patches of foam rise high in the air, tinted by
the sun’s rays so they show the colors of the rainbow. Now he passes
us at full speed like a racing yacht and comes to a sudden halt, by
planting his powerful hind feet in the muddy bottom. The toes spread
out covering a square yard of mud. With his front limbs converted into
arms, he draws into his huge mouth, large mouthfuls of the luscious
forage to be sheared into shreds by his scissor-like teeth behind,
after it has been nipped off by the hard horny duck-bill in front.
There are three rows of teeth in the cutting surface and magazines
below, containing two thousand teeth in all. As fast as one tooth
is worn out it is shed and another takes its place. Further, they
are so arranged that only alternate teeth can drop out at a time.
Professor Marsh has called this giant lizard _Trachodon annectens_.
We have certainly a fine view of him. Back of the head a frill rises
gently to the shoulders. The sun light reflects from the water every
shining scale and contour of the graceful body, and exhibits the play
of the strong muscles. He is in his natural habitat and has finished
breakfast, if you please. Lifting his head he turns towards the narrow
neck of land that separates him from a bayou just beyond. He wades
through the mass of rank vegetation towards shore, and as he reaches
the muddy slope between high and low tide, he rests his front feet on
the sloping bank. Then with body raised a few feet above the mud, and
dragging his tail behind him when he reaches the fringe of bushes,
he pushes his duck-bill into them nosing around as if to scent some
danger. As the coast seems clear he hurries across the narrow strip of
land.
The cooling touch of morning breeze
Waft incense from a censor hidden
The gentle sighing of trees
Add music to the scene unbidden.
As he hies himself away “to fresh scenes and pastures green.” But hark!
a noise that thrills us, what can mean it? See! It is the tiger of the
Everglades rushing forward toward his prey. His two powerful limbs on
which his body is posed are full ten feet in length. The three toes
armed with claws of hardened horn are over ten inches long. He spans
full thirty feet in length. Small front limbs are hardly noticeable. He
drags a long tail on the ground. His long and powerful jaws are armed
with horrid teeth. Some six inches in length with double edges serrated
on their cutting surfaces. Our herbivore, knowing his weakness, rushes
frantically back towards the water, but he is unable to reach it.
His enemy is upon him and with relentless fury strikes blows at his
unprotected body, with first one, and then the other claw-armed hind
foot that tears open the tender fresh and pours a flood of life-blood
on the ground. The awful terror of the scene has rendered us speechless
with horror, coming so swiftly in the peaceful redwood forest. The sun
was not darkened, the perfume of flowers still scented the air; the
gentle breeze sighed in the branches over head. Though the victim was
a cold blooded reptile, we had become deeply interested in him and we
were unprepared for such a woodland tragedy.
Coming back to the second question that has so interested me: How has
this great canyon been cut out of the heart of the prairie through the
rocks of the Edmonton Cretaceous?
The recession of the cliffs of the main canyon and its side coulees
is very rapid. The upper beds, composed of uncemented fine sand and
clay, under the action of rain, or frost, cave off in great avalanches
of shaken up material that rapidly disintegrate and is carried off by
the rains to the Red Deer River, where the high water hurries it on to
augment the sediment accumulated by the lake or river’s mouth or Lake
Winnipeg itself.
Often acres of the margin of the prairies slide down and fill a coulee,
or drop into the river, through which a passage is rapidly cut and
the mass is shoved on by other masses behind, until it has all been
carried away. Every time it rains the fine clay and sand dissolves like
soft soap, and as mud is carried into the river. The deeper canyons
have their ridges bisected by lateral ravines until they meet and form
buttes and knolls that in turn weather into hay-stacks or sugar-loaf
mounds that are being constantly reduced by wind and rain and frost,
until now, often we find a perfect labyrinth of intricate gorges,
buttes, towers, and table lands of every conceivable form, strewn, with
traveled boulders, from the prairie above, or masses of bog iron that
have withstood the disintegrating action of the elements. But for this
constant corroding of the rocks and the consequent recession of cliffs,
we would know nothing of the wealth of extinct forms that lie here in
their last sleep. Nothing of the fauna and flora of the day when these
dry bones were full of life and vigor, when the marshes and lowlands
echoed to the formidable tread of reptiles, and the crush of mighty
carnivores rushing relentlessly on their prey.
In addition to boulders, and iron concretions, the faces of the bluffs
are covered with cherty chips that accumulate often in some shallow
wash. These slip under the feet, and made it difficult to climb the
steeper ascents. More than once I measured my full length on the steep
surface cutting face and hands by the impact. But strange to say when
it was wet, and the clay beds were as treacherous as if covered with
soft soap, where ever the cherty fragments accumulated, one could climb
on them in safety, as they were pressed into the slick clay, and held
the feet securely as if there were spikes in the shoes. On account of
these fragments I was able to travel over the beds on a wet day, and
found the best deposit we discovered of fossil bones, in the coulee
through which the Canadian Northern has its right of way, on the west
side of the Red Deer River. We made a large collection of scattered
bones here.
Near here, also, we secured a great collection of redwood leaves, and
branches with their narrow leaflets as beautifully preserved in the
flinty rock as if impressed in wax, but yesterday. The Red Letter Day
for us, however, was when Charlie found on the 13th of August, 1912,
the wonderfully complete skeleton of a duck-billed dinosaur, the first
ever mounted in Canada. It is thirty-two feet long. The end of the
tibia only was exposed, within a hundred yards of the shack of Dan
McGee, forty yards above the forks of McCheche Creek, six miles west of
Drumheller. The entire skeleton except the tail was present. Lying on
its right side, the hind limbs were doubled on themselves, the front
ones at right angles to the body, and the head bent towards the front
limbs. We got the skeleton uncovered and discovered the ribs were
expanded and in natural position. The animal lay like a dead dog; I
thought I had never seen any thing so pitiful, and forlorn.
Charlie and I mounted it the next winter, and were careful to put
a little life in the dead skeleton by straightening out the neck a
little, and giving a sense of motion as it were to the tail so that
the animal would not look as repulsive as it otherwise would to some
observers; for there is such a thing as breathing life into the
skeletons that have been buried out of sight these three million years
or more. We have mounted it then with the slight changes in the neck,
and one hind limb that otherwise would have covered important bones
in the original matrix, and in the position in which it was floated
to bank, and was covered up with mud. Even the skin impression is
preserved along the pelvis; and the rows of ossified tendons that cross
each other in three rows, like basket work, showing they were used
to bind the muscles of the back and tail together. They were likely
flexible as whale-bone in life.
The figure 8 shows the skeleton as now mounted in the Victoria Memorial
Museum, of Ottawa, Ontario. It was no easy undertaking to save and
mount this wonderfully complete skeleton; it was buried in fine sandy
clay that was cracked in all directions, as were the bones, cracked
into thousands of fragments. Only our years of experience in the field,
and my faith in the skill and patience of Charlie gave me courage to
believe that it could ever be mounted. It could never have been saved,
but for knowledge of the plaster process of collecting.
I will try and give my readers the process by which we not only kept
the bones (broken into countless fragments and ready to fall into
powder), in their places, but saved the shattered matrix in which they
were embedded. My whole party worked in what I call for a better term
“a quarry.” The first thing to do was to remove with pick and shovel
the loose sand and clay and lay bare a floor in the cliff large enough
so we would have plenty of elbow room, and could work down around the
skeleton. We first traced the lateral spines so there was no danger of
digging into the bones from above. This work was done with a digger and
crooked awl, and only the merest trace of the bones were developed;
when bones were exposed, they were instantly filled with shellac. They
fall to powder on exposure without this precaution. The dorsal spines
were traced in the same way and the ribs in front. Then we cut down
several feet outside the skeleton so we could get under it. The skull
was covered with burlap soaked in plaster and removed. The front limbs
came next; and here we learned a lesson that was of inestimable value
to us in taking up the vast bulk of the trunk region. When we turned
the front limbs over a lot of shattered rock fell out and threatened to
bring the bones with it and thus ruin the bones. No human being would
have been able to mend these bones if they were once jumbled together,
so we thanked God, and resolved not to attempt the big sections without
covering the entire trunk beneath as well as above with plaster and
burlap to hold the rock in place, and, of course, the broken bones. A
surgical operation, in fact, in which the broken joints are kept in
place until they reach the skilled preparator in the Museum laboratory.
We dug a very narrow trench under the skeleton, after the upper surface
had been heavily covered with plaster and burlap, and willow poles to
hold it firmly together, dividing the trunk into two sections. Each
weighed about 3,000 pounds. After our trench had been dug we found that
the plastered strips would not stick and pulled part of the rotten rock
off with them, and threatened to allow the bones to fall out too. Our
only plan under the circumstances was to stick the ends of our burlap
strips securely to either side of the skeleton, above and when we
had a number of them firmly attached we threw loose dirt under them
and tamped it firmly thus forcing the plaster strips in place until
they hardened or set and held the loose rock and bones. Then we built
supports under the hardened strips, and continued the process until
the whole section was held firmly together. It was separated at the
dividing line by leaving one section untouched and firmly bedded in
its native rock. We then cut a narrow channel to the bones, above and
below, and by removing the supports broke off the sections through the
bones. The other section was prepared in the same way, the ends were
covered, and our skeleton was ready for transportation.
When we threw out the earth from above and around the specimen we built
a platform so we could back a wagon up to it. Dan McGee who had handled
heavy logs in the eastern woods built a runway of two inch planks to
the wagon. Then the boys, under Charlie’s management started to load
a heavy section, Dan with bar sunk deeply in the earth to act as a
snubbing post, a strong rope around the section and one end in a half
hitch around the bar. They edged the mass towards the slide. What was
their surprise, when the section started in obedience to the law of
gravity, to see the crow bar torn from Dan’s hands and thrown to one
side, and the section unrestrained gaining momentum at an amazing
rate. The men below who were guiding it sprang out of the way, and the
huge mass never stopped until it landed in the bottom of the wagon.
The careful wrapping had prevented any damage, and without doubt it
would have rolled to the bottom of the ravine without hurt. I must
acknowledge that I was very doubtful whether it would be possible ever
to mend the broken front limbs. They had been near the surface, and
had been subject to the effects of frost, and plants, their rootlets
had severed the broken fragments, and fed on their edges destroying
often the contact faces. But Charlie’s patience and endurance settled
the question. And after six weeks of constant effort he had filled
the bones with shellac, picked up the fragments with small tweezers,
cemented them, and pressed them into place. No one without close
inspection could tell that the front limbs had ever been broken. The
tail I restored from scattered bones picked up in the bone-beds,
building it up by comparison with the one I sent to Paris, rather an
enlarged photograph of the specimen made by the division of Photography
of the Geological Survey.
Levi found a second specimen, larger than Charlie’s in the Edmonton,
near Wigmore Ferry, a few miles west of Munson. This we have not yet
prepared. So we returned to Ottawa after three months hunt for big
game in the Edmonton rocks at Drumheller, Alberta, with a carload of
fossils.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Steveville at the mouth of Berry Creek,
Alberta. Page 52.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Charlie’s Carnivore, as he found it. Page 55.]