The Life of a Fossil Hunter

by Charles H. Sternberg

I know that there is water at the river, but it is so far away from my work that I go on and on in the hope of finding some nearer at hand. Dinnertime comes, and the day is so hot that perspiration flows from every pore. A howling south wind rises and fills our eyes with clouds of pure lime dust, inflaming them almost beyond human endurance. Still no water. The driver, with horses famishing for it, makes frantic gestures to me to hurry. To ease my parched lips and swelling tongue, I roll a pebble around in my mouth, or, if the season is propitious, allay my thirst with the acid juice of a red berry that grows in the ravines.

After hours of search, I find in moist ground the borings of crawfishes; with line and sinker I measure the depth to water a couple of feet below in these miniature wells. The welcome signal is given to Will, the driver, and he digs a well, so that both man and beast may be supplied.

If I could sum up all the sufferings I endured in the chalk fossil fields, I should say that I suffered more from the lack of good drinking water than from all the other ills combined. Except when we were in the vicinity of one of the half-dozen springs that are scattered about over an expanse of country a hundred miles long and forty wide, the only water that we had to drink was alkali water, which has the same effect upon the body as a solution of Epsom salts, constantly weakening the system. Yet whole neighborhoods of settlers to this day have no other water for themselves or their beasts, and they show the deteriorating effects in their faces and their walk.

If I have found, scattered along a wash, the bones of some fossil fish or reptile, as soon as we have pitched camp and eaten our meal of antelope meat, hot biscuits, and coffee, we both return with pick and shovel, and, carefully saving each weathered fragment, trace the remains to where the rest of the bones lie in situ, as the scientists say,—that is, in their original position in their rocky sepulcher.

Then comes the work in the hot sun, whose rays are reflected with added fervor from the glaring surface of the chalk. Every blow of the pick loosens a cloud of chalk dust, which is carried by the wind into our eyes. But we labor on with unfailing enthusiasm until we have laid bare a floor space upon which I can stretch myself out at full length. Lying there on the blistering chalk in the burning sun, and working carefully and patiently with brush and awl, I uncover enough of the bones so that I can tell what I have found, and so that when I cut out the rock which holds them I shall not cut into the bones themselves.

After they have been traced, if they lie in good, hard rock, a ditch is cut around them, and by repeated blows of the pick, the slab which contains them is loosened.

This is then securely wrapped and strengthened with plaster or with burlap bandages that have been dipped in plaster of the consistency of cream. In the case of large specimens, boards are put lengthwise to assist in strengthening the material, so that it will bear transportation. Later I hope to tell of a method, originated by me, by which the most delicate fossil, even if preserved in very loose, friable rock, may be detached and transported safely.

So, as a hunter will follow the deer, through thickets and over rocks, forgetting hunger and cold and thirst in his anxiety to get a glimpse of his game, that he may add its antlers to his list of trophies, we fossil hunters, Professor Mudge’s party and my own, sought our prey over miles and miles of barren chalk beds, cheerfully enduring countless discomforts.

Urged on by enthusiasm and the desire to secure finer and finer material, I went over every inch of the acres of exposed chalk along these ravines and creeks, hoping each moment to find stretched before my delighted eyes a complete skeleton of one of those old sea serpents described by Cope, or a specimen of that wonderful Pteranodon, or toothless flying reptile, whose wing expanse was twenty feet or more.

All day, from the first streak of light until the last level ray forced me to leave the work, I toiled on, forgetting the heat and the miserable thirst and the alkali water, forgetting everything but the one great object of my life—to secure from the crumbling strata of this old ocean bed the fossil remains of the fauna of Cretaceous Times.