At the time it was mounted, this great predaceous fish of the Cretaceous was said to be the most striking example of a fossil fish in any museum of the world. Since that day, however, a still finer one has been sent to the Carnegie Museum. This specimen is much superior to that at the American Museum, as the ribs, spines, pelvic fins, arches, and anal fin are in position.
I should certainly be guilty of a great injustice to my friend and the friend of paleontology, Mr. W. O. Bourne, of Scott City, whose name has already appeared in these pages in connection with the great Tylosaur in the American Museum, if I did not give him due credit for his share in the securing of this specimen. He discovered the splendid fish and tumbled a small mountain over on top of it to hide it. Then he kindly gave it to me, and after much digging, my son was able to get trace of it. Mr. Bourne showed his wisdom in thus covering it up, not only from the elements, but also from man, who, out of curiosity, has destroyed some splendid examples of creative power. I shall mention one or two as object lessons before I complete this history.
But let us put life into this fish, whose bones now lie in the Carnegie Museum.
We are back again where the two mosasaurs did battle royal for our enjoyment. Watch that ripple! It is caused by a shoal of mackerel scurrying in toward shallow water, in a mighty column five feet deep. They are flying for their lives, for they have seen behind them their most terrible enemy, a monster fish with a muzzle like a bulldog’s, and huge fangs three inches long projecting from its mouth. Two rows of horrid teeth, one above and one below, complete its armature. The great jaws, fourteen inches long and four deep, move on a fulcrum, and when they have dropped to seize a multitude of these little fish, they close with a vise-like power. The crushed and mangled remains pass down a cavernous throat to appease a voracious appetite.
The powerful front fins are armed with an outer ray that moves on a joint in the pectoral arch, a long recurved piece of solid bone, enameled on the outer side and more powerful as a weapon than a cavalryman’s sword. This single-edged sword is three feet long, and commands the respect of its owner’s enemies, the great saurians, or Kansas mosasaurs. Our fish has only to swim up close to the abdomen of a sleeping reptile, and lay it open for several feet with one sudden stroke. If that is not sufficient, a slap of the powerful tail, with a span of nearly four feet, finishes the work.
But see! nearer and nearer the great fish comes, mouthful after mouthful of the fishes falling into its horrid jaws. It must be starving; so eager is it for its prey that it seems unconscious of the fact that the tide has turned and is moving outward. Now it discovers its danger and turns, but too late. The water has gone back to the deep, leaving it struggling for breath in a shallow pool. It thrashes wildly about with its tail, whose sticky secretions help to envelop it more and more thickly with mud and slime, until at last its struggles cease.
And then the scene changes. The old ocean disappears, and we stand, George and I, three thousand feet above sea level, on Hay Creek, in Logan County, among crumbling ruins of denuded and eroded chalk; and working with pick and shovel in the burning sun, we bring the mighty carcass once more to the light of day.
But I hope to take my readers into this field again, and will pass on now to my expedition in the Bad Lands with Professor Cope.
CHAPTER III
EXPEDITION WITH PROFESSOR COPE TO THE BAD LANDS OF THE UPPER CRETACEOUS, 1876
