IN THE MILK RIVER COUNTRY
Charles M. Sternberg went ahead of my expedition to Milk River Station
in southern Alberta, exploring on horseback a great stretch of country
along the Milk River divide, and east seventy miles, or more, where
the great gorge of Milk River cuts a gash five hundred feet into the
Belly River Series. Levi and his assistant Gustav Lindblad, also went
ahead, and secured our team and outfit from near Drumheller, Alberta,
and made the long journey by wagon, so when I reached Milk River
Station, I found both boys waiting for me. From Charlie’s report I
became convinced that we had come into barren ground. I also found
that the so-called Belly River Series of Dawson, who likened it to “an
island in sea of drift” was not on Canadian soil, but in the Black Foot
Agency Reserve in Montana, where Mr. Gilmore, of the National Museum
had discovered new trachodonts, and horned dinosaurs. As I had no
authority to visit and collect in this rich field I was obliged to give
it up. I was so near, and yet owing to red tape, so far, from a field
I had come to explore; expecting to find it on as Mr. Dawson believed,
Canadian soil. I have since learned from Mr. Brown, the Associate
Curator of Reptiles in the American Museum, and the man I consider the
greatest collector of extinct reptiles, that these exposures belong
to the Edmonton Series of which we have such splendid exposures on
the Red Deer River, in Alberta. This fact has greatly lessened the
disappointment. However, as misfortune never comes alone, a thorough
exploration of the exposures of Milk River, Alberta, revealed the fact
that they too, were quite barren of vertebrae fossils. On the afternoon
of the eighth of June, 1915, with all my party together, we drove down
to Verdegris coulee, twelve miles east of Milk River Station. It is
a comparatively wide valley, rather barren of vegetation. There is a
large lake named in honor of the Deputy Minister of the Department of
Mines, Mr. R. G. McConnell, a short distance above camp, on the coulee.
There are rather extensive exposures, along the slopes that lead up
from the valley to the prairie a hundred feet above. The lower reaches
are purple, yellowish, and reddish clays, and sand into which one sinks
while walking. Above is yellowish sandstone that stands out in bold
escarpments in places, it is washed into steep slopes. In this coulee
I found some fine leaf impressions--Platanus, Poplar, and a splendid
palm, shaped like a date palm. The fine palmetto palms, I found above
the Lance Beds in Wyoming, were fan-shaped. These, however, have long,
lance-shaped leaflets from a common central stem. I described it to
Dr. F. H. Knowlton, of the U. S. Geological Survey last winter, and he
has never seen anything like it. It is evidently new to science. From
a letter received lately I have learned our suppositions were correct.
This is the first Palm of this kind seen by men of science from the
Cretaceous Age.
At the mouth of Verdegris Coulee, Charlie photographed some remarkable
fine rock forms carved out by nature. The photograph showing the
urn-shaped mass, was formed by a sand blast operated by the winds, that
whirled around the mass that had been separated from the main rock in
the recession of cliffs. The top layer being harder than the rest, it
was corroded more slowly than the lower and softer layers, producing
the wonderful urn. The sand and wind polishing and planing away the
rock, as effectually as if had been a broom stick under the action of a
lath. I think this one of the most beautiful designs of nature I have
ever seen. The second picture Charlie thinks resembles an “Egyptian
Sphinx.”
On the 12th of June we reached our camp in the valley of Milk River.
In the very center of the exposures, some three miles above where it
crosses the International Line, and flows towards the Upper Missouri,
in Montana. On the 15th my notes record that I had gone over the
entire series of rocks from top to bottom, finding only a few isolated
crumbling bones of dinosaurs, of the Belly River Age. The first two
hundred feet (speaking approximately, as I had no instruments of
precision), of the exposures are chiefly clay, with oyster shells
scattered through them; also on top, quite a layer of oyster shells in
a yellowish sandstone, filled with iron. Just above are two persistent
layers of coal, or very black bituminous shales. One vein, I concluded,
must have been between two and three feet thick. There are places where
this vein has been worked by farmers, evidently, from the prairie
above. As the coal is seventy miles from the railway at Medicine Hat,
it is not likely anyone will be found to work it extensively. Above
the coal are heavy strata of yellowish or grey clays, with intervening
beds of greyish and yellowish sands. On the summit of the badlands are
huge concretions, weighing many tons, each lying in yellow sand. In
this sand, too, I found the best prospect for fossil bones I have seen
in the region. I found a perfect femur of a trachodont running under
one of these heavy concretions. Owing to the fact that where there
were no concretions, the sand disintegrates so easily, grass and other
plants always take possession and cover the sand. So if there are any
skeletons here on Milk River they are covered up.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.--_Centrosaurus_ discovered by Charles H.
Sternberg. Page 123.]
Above the coal veins for about three hundred feet there are beds
composed largely of mussels and univalves, showing that great piles of
them were heaped in drifts along the ancient shore.
We could have secured tons of these shells, that to all appearances
might have died yesterday. Many had the original shell with its
pearly lustrous layer attached to the inner cast of mud that filled
the shells. Usually, however, when a shell was disturbed it fell
off and left the cast in my hands. I learned many things about this
great exposure. All the various rocks show they have been laid down
under water. I can imagine a great flood plain along the cretaceous
ocean at first, just below the surface of the water, that must have
been brackish at first for so many oyster shells to accumulate.
There were no great reed and rush covered plains where the horned
dinosaurs could feed; no bayous or lakes bordered with dense jungles of
vegetation, where countless swimming duck-bills enjoyed the luxurious
feeding places, but a shallow waste of waters, where oysters secured
a precarious foothold. Then the scene changed. The land was raised
sufficiently so a rank vegetation of sponge-moss and other forms
covered all the rising land until a vast bed of vegetable matter had
accumulated, when it went below the sea and was covered with ocean mud
and eventually compressed into coal. Then again the land was lifted
above high tide, fresh water for many years spread out in shallow
sheets over the region in which there was sufficient moss and other
vegetation to provide food for the univalves or gastropods, and a
multitude of mussels plowed through the muddy sand.
We had so much rain that we were not only delayed, but feared we would
never be able to pull our load of baggage out on the prairie. The
road we used to get into the valley, made by farmers, was impassible
when wet. I became very much discouraged, as there is no harder work
for a fossil hunter than to walk day after day over barren ground.
Professor Cope once sent me in on a hypothetical fossil hunt. He had
decided in his own mind in Philadelphia, that above the Permian beds of
Texas there was a new horizon that would yield new extinct animals, he
wanted to be the fortunate discoverer of the new fauna. I had, however,
explored this region years before, for the Museum of Comparative
Zoology at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I knew it was barren. Owing,
however, to his insistence, I yielded my judgment to his, to my cost,
and spent a month of useless effort, heart breaking indeed. That
was the last time he ever attempted to give me instructions from
Philadelphia when I was in the field.
On the 25th of June, after exploring the Milk river country, and
finding it barren, we camped on our way back to the rich Red Deer
River beds at a point fifteen miles south of Medicine Hat. We had
just pitched out tent when a violent wind storm as bad as the winds
of Kansas, struck us, accompanied with rain. We escaped serious
trouble, but a little town west of Medicine Hat was badly wrecked,
where the wind developed into a genuine cyclone that tore down houses
and scattered chimneys and loose boards over the prairie. Thanking God
for our escape we passed north next day. At Medicine Hat I went ahead
by train and left the boys to follow with the wagon. From Brooks I
went over to Steveville. On reaching the river, however, I found it
was at full flood and covered with driftwood, logs and hewn timber.
The ferryman, Mr. Shaw, came over for me in a row boat, and I had so
much confidence in him as a river man that I trusted myself to his
keeping. His skill with the oar brought me safely over the raging Red
Deer River. He avoided all the logs and other driftwood, and landed
me in safely on the northern shore. Even then I found the river had
backed water up the creek between the ferry and Steveville, and I had
to walk a long ways to get above the backwater. After quite a journey
I reached the hospitable hotel of Steve Hall. It was a full week before
the boys reached me and we got once more into camp. They were delayed
by the high water.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.--Limb of _Gorgosaurus_ Mounted by Charles M.
Sternberg, Page 58.]