WE EXPLORE DEAD LODGE CANYON
We reached Drumheller, where we purchased from Mr. Moore of the same
place a five horse power motor boat; we also built a flat boat 12 feet
by 28 feet. We pitched two tents on deck, one for sleeping in, the
other for a kitchen. Jack McGee and I went aboard. We threw a rope to
Charlie in his motor boat, which he fastened to a post on the small
deck behind. Some kindly hand pushed us off into the stream, Charlie
got up power and dragged us into the current. The women and children
were on hand to see us off. Our motor boat under Charlie’s management
went chug, chug, down the river at the rate of five miles an hour. The
water was at full flood, covered with drift wood and floating logs,
but we rapidly passed them. Levi had taken the team and wagon over
the rough road to Steveville. As we swiftly glided along, the table
buttes, haystack-like mounds, and long naked ridges that mark out the
exposures of the Edmonton Series, were in full view on either side.
The heads of ravines, under the prairie level were packed with clumps
of aspen and other trees, as was the narrow flood plain and scattered
islands with cottonwoods. We reached the mouth of Willow Creek at one
thirty in the afternoon. The scenery in ever-shifting panoramas, was
beautiful indeed. The rushing river hurried us on from one prospect
to another, each one seemingly more beautiful than the last. The grey
sandstone beds increased in thickness, and the visible coal seams
thinned out. Fifteen miles below Drumheller the Edmonton beds ran under
the river, the yellow silt of the Pleistocene capping the older beds.
Great land slides impinged on the curves of the ox-bows of the winding
stream. Concretions stuck out of the sandstone ledges, like toad stools
on a pine log. The river was about 600 feet wide. At three in the
afternoon the upper buttes had disappeared. Sharply rounded haystack
buttes, or sugar loaves, and narrow ridges that tongued out from the
prairie on the south, were visible. On the north, long grassy slopes
were frequent. The valley widened and the hills retreated towards the
distant prairie. There were ranches along the flood plain. At four
thirty we reached a ranch twenty-five miles below Drumheller. We now
got into the marine Fort Pierre. These beds underlie the Edmonton, and
were exposed along the river’s edge. Rounded bluffs, with here and
there an exposure of dark shales were the order of the day. The timber
shrunk and the grass was short; showing the effects of the unfriendly
alkaline shales on the soil. By five o’clock we had left the last
of the Edmonton beds behind. The Pierre and Pleistocene occupy all
the country. The flood plain widens to about three miles. We tied up
for the night at a willow thicket, and the tireless chug, chug, of
the motor ceased. We prepared to spend the night there. After supper
I went into the Pierre hills, and found numberless large concretions
that contained huge ammonites. But just as the rock was shattered by
the weather so also were the shells. I could not find a good specimen.
We got a number of beautiful ones, however, over the Belly river beds,
where the Pierre again appears, showing that before, as well as after,
the country was occupied with the fresh water beds of the Cretaceous,
the sea had covered the country for a long period of time. We were
early astir, and Charlie hauled us in mid-stream. A strong east wind
blew in our faces, it was disagreeable, because we had to lower our
tents to the deck, as they acted as sails, and the power of the wind on
them was stronger than the current and the five horse power motor would
have driven us up stream. The choppy waves beat constantly against the
front and sides of our scow curling over the deck itself. The wind
howled in the few cottonwoods along the shore and on the islands, that
we passed. The hills on either side were lower; at Bull Pond Creek,
scarcely seventy-five feet in height. About nine o’clock we reached the
fifth ferry below Drumheller. The ferry man had stretched a barbed
wire across the river; Charlie saw it as he drove his motor under it
and shouted to us, Jack rushed for the rear guiding oar and I for the
front one, they were both stuck several feet up in the air, and if the
wire had caught one, it would have swamped us. Jack had his back to the
wire and when he released the oar and stood up, it caught his hat and
threw it in the river. If the wire had been six inches lower, or the
river six inches higher, it would have cut his head off as easily, and
thrown it into the river.
We were also thankful the tents were down. If they had not been, they
would have been torn from the deck. We soon got into a new horizon. I
knew this by the change in the sculpturing of the bluffs. We tied up
to a willow thicket for dinner; the wind began to fall. At ten minutes
of five in the afternoon the naked buttes, towers and ridges of the
Belly River Series of the Cretaceous loomed up in the distance. We soon
reached Steveville, (Fig. 10) and managed to make a landing in the
swift stream, just below the Ferry, and below the mouth of Berry Creek
on whose border the little town stood. A hospitable town it proved to
us; especially have we often enjoyed the hospitality of Steve Hall’s
Hotel; after this jolly good fellow the town gets its name. We were
not far from Mr. Brown’s camp. He had a party here collecting for the
American Museum. I was delighted to learn that my son George, who had
been working for the American Museum under Brown for over a year, had
been appointed on the Geological Survey of Canada, and would join my
party.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Charlie’s Carnivore. Preparing sections
wrapped in plaster. Page 55.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Charlie’s Carnivore. Loading with Triplex.
Page 57.]
We found that we had made the eighty miles from Drumheller in sixteen
hours (Fig. 10) travel. And though the trip had been delightful, and
exciting, I was glad to walk again on solid ground. I had gotten used,
however, to the cheerful chug, chug of the little motor, saying “all’s
well.” It took good judgment on Charlie’s part to choose always the
deep water route, on a stream he had never navigated before, to know
which side of an island to take when the current parted, and always
choose the strongest. Mr. Shaw the ferryman at Steveville, showed me
a ledge of rock at the water-level, about a hundred yards above the
ferry, that was literally packed with plants, especially water lily
leaves, that were as perfectly preserved as if impressions were made
of them in wax. I secured a large collection for the Victoria Memorial
Museum. Charlie and I went down the river to spy out the land. We found
a large exposure of the strata on the south side of the river. He was
so fortunate as to find the skeleton of a carnivore that promised to be
the most perfect one known to science at that time, from the Cretaceous
(Fig. 11). This has since been proved to be the truth. In this specimen
the ventral ribs and one front limb appear in their normal position
for the first time in a carniverous dinosaur from the Cretaceous. The
figure shows it as he found it. The double row of ventral ribs, the
head and the hind limbs, with one foot lying on the slope in sight.
Our work was thus laid out for us and on the Fourth of July we moved
our camp to the site shown in the figure, about three miles below
Steveville on the southern side of Red Deer River. Our camp was near a
large area of badlands. A splendid flat for the horses, wood and water
without end. If you will reread my explorations of the Kansas Chalk,
where we had cow chips to burn, and alkaline water to drink, beneath
a burning sun, you will realize how much we enjoyed this camp. (Fig.
15.) It was not perfect, however, the mosquitoes made life a burden,
but with smudges ever going, our nets over our shoulders when we moved
in the sage brush, we were reasonably comfortable, especially as we
got fresh butter, eggs and chickens every week from a neighboring
farmer. This proved the richest camp I ever made. Further, to add to
our blessings we were only three miles from the post office, and a trip
for the mail on our motor boat, was a delightful change from the heavy
work in the beds. Levi came into camp with the outfit and George soon
joined us, and no one ever had so many born fossil hunters in one party
before, full of enthusiasm, each trying to find better specimens than
the other, but with friendly rivalry; we put in the most profitable and
delightful summer I have ever experienced. Charlie took possession
of Jack McGee and settled down to the heavy work of excavating the
carnivore from the face of the cliff. I show you a picture (Fig.
12) taken by Charlie himself of the two men at work, after they had
nearly finished wrapping the two heavy sections of the trunk; Jack is
cutting burlap strips, while Charlie is mending some bones that tore
out when they separated the two sections. Then again (Fig. 13) with
triplex block they are hoisting a section into the wagon. The two men
put in six strenuous weeks, removing the great mass of rock that lay
above the bones, blasting out tons of rock, and dumping it below on
the side of the gulch to make a road. Jack used to say in regard to
the skeleton “it is altogether wonderful.” To which sentiment I fully
agreed. You will get some idea of the labor required if you look at the
picture with Charlie standing in the quarry after the specimen had been
removed. (Fig. 14.) When they hauled the sections out it was along a
ridge so narrow that if the horses had balked or a wheel had slipped
they would have been dashed to pieces in the gorge below. So important
seemed this specimen to me I wanted the advice of the principle
paleontologists in the Eastern United States, before we mounted it. So
with authority from the Director of the Survey, Charlie and I visited
Pittsburgh first, where we were cordially received by Dr. Holland,
the Director. Both Dr. Holland and Mr. Peterson the paleontologist
and also Mr. Earl Douglass, the noted collector and preparator of the
huge _Brontosaurus_ material from Nevada. All three agreed, that in
their opinion we should make a panel mount of the carnivore, not taking
it out of the original matrix. They used the argument that a student
could then come to his own conclusions in regard to it as easily as if
he had collected it himself, while if we made an open mount of it, he
would have to depend on the veracity of the preparator. We were kindly
treated here and saw the magnificent _Brontosaur_ Mr. Douglas had found
in Nevada. It is a fourth larger than the famous _Diplodocus carnegii_.
World renowned, because of the casts Mr. Carnegie has sent to the
Museums of Europe. The _Brontosaur_ is sixteen feet high at the hips
and eighty-two feet long. We hurried on to Washington, and there both
Mr. Gilmour and Gidley, the vertebrae paleontologists, were warm in
their opinions that it would be a crime to take it out of its original
matrix, and thus lose the authority that goes with it. Mr. Gilmour
showed me the fine skeleton of a _Stegosaur_ they had just mounted in
the way he proposed we should mount ours. It lies on a base a couple of
feet above the floor, in the rock in which it was buried. He assured me
that people showed more interest in this mount than in any other in the
National Museum though they had some splendid open mounts. Mr. Gilmour
claims that to advance our science rapidly, complete articulated
skeletons should be left in the original rock in which they were
buried. The scattered skeletons and those well known might be exhibited
in open mounts.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--Quarry after Carnivore was removed. Page 57.]
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--Sternberg’s Camp 3 miles below Steveville.
Page 54.]
At Philadelphia, I saw Dr. Nolan who has been the Secretary of the
Philadelphia Academy of Science since he was first elected in 1876.
He thought a slab mount the most impressive, and could not realize
how any one would think of mounting it otherwise. Then we traveled
out to Princeton, and this was the first and only time I have been
there. I greatly enjoyed their magnificent collection. I was especially
interested in Waterhouse Hawkins’ paintings on the ceilings, of troops
of _Laelaps_, or duck-billed dinosaurs running on their powerful hind
limbs, carrying their huge tails clear of the ground--a pose that many
paleontological artists stick to with amazing tenacity. I have proved
over and over again that these animals were swimmers. We were invited
to the home of Prof. W. B. Scott, and after I told him the condition of
our carnivore, he at once said the bones should not be taken out of the
matrix. He instanced the case of the great collection of _Iguanodonts_
in the Brussels Museum, some thirty individuals. Many mounted in their
rocky sepulchers. Our carnivore should lie as we found him on a slab
in bold relief. I must confess that my original idea that it should
be mounted over the partial skeleton of a _Trachodont_ on which he
was to be feeding was fast falling away from me in the face of such
opinions by the greatest of our paleontologists. When we reached New
York we met in the American Museum, the President, Dr. Henry F. Osborn,
Dr. Mathews the Curator of Vertebrate Fossils, and his assistants, Mr.
Granger and Barnum Brown. Dr. Osborn gave the opinion that was held by
all the others, that we should mount it as we found it, clearing away
the rock so all the bones stand out from their matrix, but held in it,
except where limb bones might cover some other bones; in which case
they must be removed and mounted clear. I had not a foot to stand on,
when I visited the authority on dinosaurs, Dr. Lull of Yale. He took us
out to lunch and agreed with the other students, without question. I
was glad indeed, therefore to reconsider my first opinion and recommend
to the Director of the Geological Survey, that we should mount it as
the paleontologists had indicated, as I believe this would be a world
specimen in which all students of ancient life would be interested. Mr.
Lambe agreeing with this opinion also.
Charlie spent the greater part of eight months, including the winter
of 1913, in preparing it. There is a great deal more to do before it
is finally mounted permanently in the Museum at Ottawa. Mr. Lambe,
the Vertebrate Paleontologist of the Geological Survey of Canada, has
called this noted specimen _Gorgosaurus libratus_, or in English, if
you please, “The fierce looking easily balanced carniverous dinosaur.”
The skull is about three feet long, with all the teeth in place;
they are from four to five inches in length, slightly recurved, with
flattened sides, double edged, with serrated margins. Fierce indeed
must he have looked, when he slunk up on his prey, his eyes flashing
cruelty, with glistening teeth also, and forked tongue. His entire body
from the front of the jaws, to end of the tail was twenty-nine feet in
length. His powerful hind limbs, on which the entire body was balanced,
were ten and a half feet in length. He had three great, claw-armed
toes, and one not so large, raised from the ground like the spur of a
rooster. His front limbs were mere vestigials, only twenty-three inches
long; and the digits were reduced to two, with weak claw bones. We are
unable to imagine to what use they could have been put. The abdominal
walls were protected in front by 16 pairs of ventral ribs, that were
united to the regular ribs by rods of bone on each side; they passed
each other midway in front, in order to allow the increase and decrease
in the walls during the act of breathing, sliding at their ends, back
and forth with each breath. They were as effectively protected as if
sheathed in iron hoops. The long bones were hollow, and the feet like
those of a running bird. In front of the pelvic arch the pubic bones
were provided with two large feet, that, in position, were in a line
with the ventral ribs. In order to rest on these he must have been
able to flex his limbs like a living _Sphenodon_, or New Zealand lizard
(eighteen inches or more in length) does. This seems a more reasonable
pose to me than the one usually given Cretaceous carniverous dinosaurs.
I cannot believe he always made a conspicuous object of himself when
he was hunting over the grassy and rushy plains for his prey, the
herbivorous dinosaurs. I would rather think he slunk along their spoor
or the trails, they had beaten through the rank vegetation, as a tiger
would crawl up on his victim. So I picture him, when I try to put
life into his old dry bones. It has been the habit of paleontologists
to make a composite animal of a dinosaur, with characters of birds,
mammals and reptiles. Several trachodonts and horned dinosaurs I have
seen painted, with a thick rhinoceros-like skin, when we now know they
had scales patterned after the Gila Monster of Arizona today as far as
the scales go. The bones on the underside of the tail, called chevrons,
are shaped like runners, as if to carry out my belief, that he dragged
his tail behind him like a lizard of today. What was his ventral armor
for, if not to protect the vital organs from the hard tough rushes
and swamp grass of his habitat? What would be the use of the ventral
ribs otherwise? From my work in shop and quarry, I am convinced these
great reptiles will be treated and posed as lizards some day. Now the
Vertebrate Paleontologists follow Cope, and Marsh in their views of
these animals when, in reality they are simply reptiles that have long
since become extinct, leaving no living representatives. The nearest
being the lizards.
I climbed the rugged buttes and ridges. Many are entirely devoid of
vegetation. Our work was in a canyon four or five hundred feet deep
and measuring a mile from prairie to prairie, with long creeks or
coulees running back into the flats. Their head branches spreading
out like an open fan, as on Sand Creek, exposing thousands of acres
of denuded rock to the sun. I was so fortunate as to find two more or
less complete skeletons of a new duck-billed dinosaur, one with much of
the beautiful skin impression preserved. The small scales, often mere
tubercles, polygonal in shape arranged like mosaic-work in a pavement
with ornamental elevations “limpet-like” in form, they are arranged in
parallel rows along the abdominal walls and were reduced in size and
number in the tail. Mr. Lambe has figured some of these lovely scales.
He calls the new creature _Stephanosaurus marginatus_[A] or the crowned
lizard. Barnum Brown discovered a wonderfully complete skeleton here,
he gives it the name of _Corythosaurus casuarius_. Because the crested
head resembles a Cassowary. I am delighted to be able to use with the
permission of The American Museum authorities Deckert’s restoration
for my Front Piece. With all the wonderfully complete skeletons my
party have found of Cretaceous dinosaurs, I am forced in this specimen,
to yield the palm to Mr. Brown, I am glad to acknowledge the wonderful
skill of this indefatigable Collector and Paleontologist. Science can
never repay what she owes him for grand skeletons of the Cretaceous
Dinosaurs with which he has enriched the American Museum. Half a mile
away from the skin impression and some of the skeleton, I found part
of the head, and many of the bones, including the ischia, or the two
pelvic bones that point backward and the further ends of these bones
were footed, showing that he could bring his huge body down to the
ground and rest it partly on these strong feet. Unfortunately only half
of the head was present and its top was not complete. However, enough
was preserved to show these saurians with footed ischia had crested
heads, and were different in this respect from the _Trachodon_ already
referred to from the Edmonton Formation. I was so fortunate as to find
in the same beds at Loveland Ferry, ten miles below the mouth of Dead
Lodge Canyon, (a new locality Charlie located in 1915) two skeletons,
within fifteen feet of each other, one with most of the tail, the
trunk to shoulder blades, and the hind limbs. The other contains three
caudal, or tail vertebrae, and the whole column in front, with arches,
front and hind limbs, except that one hind foot and one fore foot were
missing. A very fine head was found pressed back against the back bone,
showing that the animal had died in the water, when the gases raised it
to the surface and the pressure of so large a body against the head,
forced it back. When the gases were liberated the body settled in a mud
bank where it became covered over, and lay buried, through all these
ages, undisturbed until the recession of the bluffs carried away the
tail. Underground channels destroyed the two feet.
[A] The Ottawa Naturalist, January, 1914.
But of these bones themselves; how can I describe their condition, I
have been faithfully at work on them for over three months, (at this
writing), and am just beginning to see that I will have a fine skull
when it is cleaned (See Fig. 16). I have since finished it. It was
preserved in a clay sandstone that chips at right angles to the bones,
breaking them into thousands of pieces. Then the bones are enclosed
with a heavy coating of bog iron, and between bones and around them, is
stone as hard at flint. The bones themselves are poorly petrified. The
spongy bone not filled with rocky material. If the thin outer covering
is broken through, the spongy bone within crumbles like an egg shell.
If a tool should slip through the covering, the bone within is broken
to fragments. How is it possible with such obstacles to ever overcome
them and prepare the skeleton for study and exhibition? Well! first of
all, whenever after the most careful scraping and cutting I got some
bone exposed, I filled it with diluted shellac or a thin solution of
ambroid, a cement I like better than shellac, although it is costly.
Then it must be left, (for a bone wet with shellac is like mud), until
thoroughly dry, and hard. The rock, too, must be held together and
strengthened in the same way. What seemed for weeks an impossible
task, became possible; as I got the bones harder and harder. I had a
solid mass to work against with steel tools. These were either small
chisels or scrapers, made by beveling off the end of large harness
makers straight awls, (made in Germany), or I used tools George made
especially for me. He became quite skilful in tempering tools. It
is needless to say that the tools that can be used in preparing one
specimen cannot be used for another. Where the rock is not too hard,
a saddler’s crooked awl is very useful, but with the skull referred
to it would have been of no use whatever. Patience, and unremitting
enthusiasm, and the hope of success, even with this specimen the worse
one to prepare I ever saw, have made success possible.
So the preparation of these Red Deer River Dinosaurs, require courage
and patience, not only for me, but for the boys, working incessantly
and going slowly to the finish. We must have complete control of our
nerves, a moment’s impatience might wreck a specimen we have sought for
years. It is a great achievement to mount one of the noble relics of
God’s creative power in the past. Our laboratory is Holy Ground. The
earth is a great plant, from which, for countless millions of years the
Creator has been turning out the creatures of his hand. Each, “having
seed in itself.” It is discouraging when I think of the multitudes that
throng our Exhibition Hall, to know how few carry any thing away with
them. They simply satisfy a curiosity, with little conception of the
enormous energy the collector and preparator expend, in heart breaking
months of exploration, and nerve trying labor in the shop. Yet some are
really interested, I remember talking for an hour or more in shop and
exhibition hall, with a minister of the Church of England. When he left
he remarked “I feel as if I had been talking with God” so closely had I
led him to Nature’s great heart. When after months of anxiety and labor
we get a specimen mounted permanently for study or exhibition, we are
relieved of a strain few can comprehend. The nearly complete skeleton
of _Stephanosaurus_ of Lambe, or _Corythosaurus_, of Brown is seen
in (Fig. 16). The front limbs, the shoulders, and half the trunk has
been covered and separated into two sections. I am sitting down to the
right at work on the less perfect specimen. With a little restoration,
however, both individuals can be made into fine mounts. What is missing
in one, can be supplied by making casts of the parts present in the
other. A vast amount of labor was expended in taking up these two
specimens, done chiefly under the management of Charles M. Sternberg.
We might have even lost the one that proved so fine but for him. I had
only found a few toe bones and a tibia and fibula covered with heavy
concretions; his labor, however, developed the greater part of the
skeleton with the best skull of these crested duck-bills we have found.
The rocks of the Belly River series of the Cretaceous are quite
different from those of the Edmonton. There are many layers of gray
sandstone beautifully fluted, often with outlying mushroom-like pillars
(See Fig. 19), as in the picture. Lying around too, are the traveled
boulders that once lay on the prairie that has been carried away by
water piece meal, leaving them behind. The fluting too, is beautifully
represented in this picture showing also, concretions sticking out
at different levels that will sooner or later form pillars under the
processes of the recession of the cliff. The concretions capping them,
preserve them from destruction. Here, (Fig. 20), is a great outlying
butte over three hundred feet high. It borders the flood plain of the
Dead Lodge Canyon. In the central ground, you will notice, if your
eyes are sharp enough, Levi at work on a fossil saurian’s skull. This
has since been figured and described by Barnum Brown under the name
of _Prosaurolophus_. Levi found a very good specimen of a crested
duck-bill lying athwart a precipitous trail down over the badlands from
the prairie. The tail was partially exposed, and not noticed by the
Indians and Cow Boys who for years had traveled on this trail (Fig.
21). Charlie found two in the same quarry. He had discovered the first
one with the tail sticking out from under a mass of clay about 18 feet
high. The prospect of heavy labor never discouraged us. So we attacked
the bank and uncovered the skeleton. At the further end of his specimen
he found the tail of another leading still farther into the face of the
excavation. As there was new surface ground to still explore we covered
it with tons of earth to discourage any would-be explorer here, and
went back to it the next year.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--Skeleton of Lambe’s _Stephanosaurus_. Page
67.]
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--Sections of _Stephanosaurus_ after wrapping.
Page 67.]
In Figure 22 the reader will see the excavation left after the two
duck-billed dinosaurs were removed. During the season of 1913, Charlie
had the most remarkable success. For though he spent six weeks of
incessant labor collecting his carnivore, he discovered a duck-bill on
his way to assist the teamster with a load. On another occasion while
walking to his carnivore he found a new trachodont at the point of a
hill (See Fig. 23). This skeleton was preserved in a hard siliceous
concretion. During the winter of 1914-15 George prepared the skull for
permanent exhibition (Fig. 24). It was placed in the Hall of Fossil
Vertebrates, the most perfect duck-billed dinosaur skull I have ever
seen. It is in its natural condition, not flattened or otherwise
injured by pressure, as is usually the case. We think the skeleton
over thirty feet in length, we secured much of the skin impression
with it, showing a different pattern from the other known forms. Mr.
Lambe calls it _Gryposaurus_, the high nosed lizard. It will take
months of labor to prepare this skeleton. Mr. Lambe in his summary of
our work says in the blue book Summary for 1913, of the Geological
Survey of Canada, page 293: “The principal field work consisted of
an expedition to the Red Deer River, Alberta, to collect dinosaurian
and other vertebrate remains from the Belly River Cretaceous in the
neighborhood of, and below Berry Creek (Steveville). The party was
composed of Charles H. Sternberg and three assistants, its success is
to be attributed not only to the skill and experience of those forming
the party, [my three sons], but also to the manner in which it was
equipped. The party was on Red Deer River from June 20th to October
3. The collection from these rocks, made by the expedition of 1913,
reveals in a striking manner the wonderful variety of the dinosaurian
life of the period. The field collection of 1913 includes members
of the _Ceratops_ (horned dinosaurs, quadrupedal, plant eaters),
_Trachodontidae_ (duck-billed dinosaurs, plant eaters), _Theropoda_
(flesh eaters), and _Stegosauridae_, (heavily armoured plant eaters),
_Plesiosaurs_, crocodiles, turtles, amphibians, and fishes are
abundantly represented, and some mammalian remains were also found.”
I know of no wilder or more fascinating scenery than that in the Dead
Lodge Canyon of the Red Deer river of Alberta. The great layers of
sandstone are often beautifully fluted. The strata of clay between
sometimes thin out to nothing (Fig. 25). The constant change in butte,
and tower ridge and pinnacle, with great concretions, or small ones
sticking out of escarpments, like window sills of a skyscraper. Some
of the photographs will give a faint idea of the beauty of this great
canyon. I here wish to place on record my appreciation of the splendid
skill developed by my sons Charlie and George, who took all the
photographs I have used to illustrate this book, except those to whom
credit will or has been given. Levi too, is learning the art rapidly
as evidenced by the illustrations for my expedition for the British
Museum for 1916. Great credit too is due Mr. Clark, the head of the
Photographic Division of the Survey, who developed and printed these
fine photographs. Neither can I forget the kindness of both directors
under whom I served, Dr. Brock and Mr. McConnell, who presented me with
full sets of the photographs we have taken in field and shop, and
Museum and also lantern slides of many.
While in camp, often after supper when our day’s work was at an end,
in a reminiscent mood, I told the boys stories. They had often heard
before, of my adventures in other fossil fields, and other days, but
as distinctly printed on memory’s pages, as if they had occurred but
yesterday. I remember recalling an adventure of George and myself in
the chalk of Kansas. We had been up towards Monument Rocks and were
returning to camp at Elkader, at the mouth of Beaver Creek in Logan
county, when we observed a storm gathering in the northwest, and
northeast quite threatening indeed. We were three miles away, and drove
like Jehu to get to shelter before the storm broke upon us. However, in
spite of our efforts, the storm overtook us on the level prairie. The
thunder clouds threw forked lightning to the ground around and in front
of us. Where it struck the dry grass of the prairie a little cloud of
dust would rise, and the grass would take fire to spread a few yards
in a circle, when the rain would follow up and put it out. The thunder
cracked in deafening peals with tongues of electricity following at
once. A calf was struck and killed a short distance from us, but we
escaped with a good soaking.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--I climbed the rugged buttes and ridges. Page
62.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--Pillars cut out of the solid rock. Page 66.]
A still more remarkable incident happened to Levi and me at
Livingstone’s ranch in Gove county, Kansas, seven miles south of
Quinter. Our tents were pitched on Hackberry Creek near the ranch barn,
a large affair covered with sheet iron. Towards evening we saw a great
dust cloud coming towards us from the northwest. I sent Levi to the
barn to put the horses in, they had been standing in the corral near
by. He had hardly accomplished this, when the storm was upon us; the
gravel and sand beat on the iron roof like hail. He stood in the door
with a lighted lantern. I feared the roof might fall in and break the
lamp, and set fire to the hay, and I shouted to him to put it out, but
he could not hear me. It became instantly dark as midnight, as the air
was dense with gravel, sand and dirt driven at terrible speed by the
raging wind. I started to the barn a hundred yards away, and got my
face cut with the flying sand, my eyes blinded with dirt. But I reached
him and put out the light and we attempted by holding each other’s hand,
to reach the tents. Suddenly we saw an electric light hanging over our
tent, on a telephone wire that was stretched above. Then another and
another sparkled in the darkness along the line and lighted up the
posts and wire fence on either side of the lane we were following.
As far as we could trace the telephone wire, little lights swung in
the wind as if some one had turned on a switch to light us to camp.
It was certainly a little uncanny to say the least, and if I had been
superstitious, I might have been frightened. Levi went off to bed in
another tent, I watched the strange phenomenon until I too, got tired,
and turned into my bed and went to sleep. All this is part of a Fossil
Hunter’s day’s work. Although this was the first time I had ever seen
an exhibition of this peculiar kind of electric display on the prairie
I was sure it represented what is called St. Elmo’s Fire at sea.
On July 18, 1913, I note that I had worked all day on Charlie’s large
trachodont which Mr. Lambe called, as I said above, _Gryposaurus_.
Twenty feet of the skeleton, besides the head was present. On page 23,
Book A, field notes for 1913, I say: “The skull is 3 feet 3 inches
long. Distance between the orbits, 9 inches. It is 19 inches from the
margin of the mandibles to the top of the skull. Which has a high
narrow set of nasals, with curved beak shaped like Brown’s New Mexican
_Trachodont_.” Then again, on page 25, “I have worked all day on
Charlie’s huge trachodont. It is a wonder, poorly preserved in a huge
brown flint concretion that is shattered into irregular fragments,
that break through the bones as well. The under part of the skeleton,
however, is in grey sandstone and clay. The body lay on its left side,
then took a turn and rested on the ventral surface. The ossified
tendons are different from the ordinary duck-bills, both with or
without crests; they are often barbed in the center and bifurcated at
one end, with the other flattened. This specimen is evidently new. I am
very anxious to save it.”
The fluted pyramids and Gothic towers stand out distinctly to the south
of the specimen in the early morning and after sundown: but in the heat
of the day the colors blend so, the sharp outlines of the different
strata are not easily distinguished.
On July 19th Mr. Barnum Brown went down the river with his scow, motor
boat and rowboat, bearing his party of five men and all his outfit.
They intended to camp on Sand Creek, which they did, and never left
that richest of all the camps in the Belly River Series in Dead Lodge
Canyon for three seasons; the richest, doubtless, in history. I believe
there are more exposures of the strata there, than all the rest of
the exposures put together. I could not leave the great carnivore
Charlie had found. Or my wonderful _Chasmosaurus_ skeleton, showing the
dermal covering for the first time in the history of horned dinosaurs.
Neither could we leave the splendid skeleton of _Gryposaurus_, or
my new duck-billed dinosaur to follow Brown and share with him the
gleanings of that rich field. Consequently, with his five collectors,
all first class men, filled with energy and enthusiasm, with such a
leader and hunter, it is little wonder that he secured that year a
great collection, now being mounted in the American Museum. He also
spent the seasons of 1914 and 1915 there also, most successfully. The
Belly River beds below Steveville and near our camp, consist chiefly,
as already mentioned, of strata of silver grey sandstone, alternating
with yellowish or ash-colored clays. Notice the picture (Fig. 25), how
the dark clay bed feathers out. The exposed clay beds crack after a
rain, like the mud flats of the river, and curl up on the surface when
dry. The fluting of the sand-beds is due to the fact that they contain
so much clay, that during a rain, the whole surface is puddled and the
water cannot pass through the thin coating of mud, and runs off the
surface in countless rivulets sculpturing the soft mass into the most
beautiful flutings imaginable. This we have often noticed before.
There are neither wells or springs in these beds, not enough water
penetrating them to produce either. There are, however, many
underground passages through which the water finds its way during a
rain to lower levels. Near the top of the badlands, or anywhere through
them, often, a sink hole is formed. The water first forming a cistern,
until a way is found for it downward, and the water escapes at last
through the mouth of a cave, it has formed. These passages are choked
with fallen rock from above, or from the sides, which in turn are
disintegrated and are carried out by water until we have a series of
natural bridges over the chasm, which break down at last, and produce a
ravine. We used water from these cisterns on several occasions to make
plaster. There was one containing many gallons near Charlie’s carnivore.
We were often bitterly disappointed in our finds. Take for instance
Levi’s crested dinosaur. He found some exposed tail vertebrae a little
to one side of a horse trail that came over the rocks from the open
prairie above, down to a branch of One Tree Creek, not far from our
camp, there Levi found 20 tail vertebrae, the pelvic arch, and hind
limbs and many ribs. So as we progressed in uncovering these we felt
confident that the entire skeleton was buried there. We were mistaken;
no head, neck or front limbs were present. From the fact that some of
the long pelvic bones had been snapped off, we concluded the missing
parts had gone in death to gorge a living specimen of _Gorgosaurus_,
the Tyrant of the Everglades. Then Charlie removed tons of rock from
where he thought the tail of his _Gorgosaur_ lay, only to find it had
taken another direction, and the same amount of energy was necessary
there as he had wasted on a false scent.
In my notes of the 11th of July, I speak of the windy day: “So strong
was the current as I clung to the steep and barren slopes; I would
often have lost my footing but for my faithful pick, whose point I
drove into the soft rock when I felt as if I was about to be blown into
a deep canyon. I would cling to my pick until there was a lull, or I
had secured a better footing. My pick, under the providence of God,
often saved my life. Once in the brakes of the Permian beds of Texas,
on a Saturday evening a great storm threatened. I though we could
reach Mr. Galyean’s house before it burst. His son was with me, a boy
of about 15 years of age. We had gone only a short distance, however,
when the rain fell in sheets, not only drenching us to the skin but
filling innumerable ditches with water running like a mill race. These
we must cross. I remember we passed through the same patch of weeds
repeatedly, so I knew in the darkness we were walking in a circle.
Every few feet was a deep and narrow ditch full to the brim with red
muddy water. I found these rushing streams by pushing my pick ahead of
me, as the only time we saw anything was when the lightning flashed. At
last we got sight of the light in McBride’s house a mile up the creek
from Galyean’s. We thus secured the direction and thought we were all
right, but without our knowledge, some one moved it from a south to an
east window and we got off again, and before we knew it were slipping
down into the roaring Coffee Creek full of driftwood. If we had slipped
into it, both of us would have been lost. The boy had hold of my coat
tails; I struck the point of my pick into the muddy slope and swung
around with John hanging on behind describing the arc of a circle. The
pick held while we dug holds with our heels to support us until I could
reach upward and take another hold with the faithful pick. Thus we got
out on the level flood plain of the creek. I then allowed John to take
the lead, and he took me as if by instinct, safely to his father’s
house where we were soon drying our clothes before the fireplace,
heaped high with blazing cottonwood chunks.”
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Outlying Buttes over 300 feet high. Page 66.]
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Levi found a good Crested Dinosaur. Page 66,
67.]
Mr. Lawrence M. Lambe the Vertebrate Paleontologist of the Survey
visited my camp on the 12th of September, 1913. We visited all the
different localities where were the different specimens we were
collecting, much to his delight. He described many of them the
following winter. In a large exposure near Steveville, we were led by
my son George to a fine turtle, one of the largest forms. The shell is
over two feet long.