The incessant labor, however, had a weakening effect upon my system so that I fell a victim to malaria, and when a violent attack of shaking ague came on, I felt as if fate were indeed against me.
I remember how, one day, when I was in the midst of a shaking fit, I found a beautiful specimen of a Kansas mosasaur. Clidastes tortor Cope named it, because an additional set of articulations in the backbone enabled it to coil. Its head lay in the center, with the column around it, and the four paddles stretched out on either side. It was covered by only a few inches of disintegrated chalk.
Forgetting my sickness, I shouted to the surrounding wilderness, “Thank God! Thank God!” And I did well to thank the Creator, as I slowly brushed away the powdered chalk and revealed the beauties of this reptile of the Age of Reptiles. Its snake-like tail and flexible movements caused it to appear to Cope a veritable serpent, so that he put it in his new sub-order Pythonomorpha.
I well remember the terrible journey over the rough sod to the station with this specimen. I was seized with another attack of ague, and as I jolted about in the bottom of the wagon, I thought that my head would surely burst. Little I cared, though, so that I got my beloved fossil to the Professor.
Fig. 6.—Skull and front limb of Clidastes tortor.
As collected and preserved by Charles Sternberg. (Now mounted in the Carnegie Museum.)
Fig. 7.—Skeleton of Clidastes tortor.
(In American Museum of Natural History.)
Fig. 8.—Skeleton of Ram-nosed Tylosaur, Tylosaurus dyspelor.
(In the American Museum of Natural History.)