Fig. 43.—Skull and Horns of Giant Bison from Hoxie, Kansas.
Spread of horn cores six feet, one inch; length along curve, eight feet.
Fig. 44.—Jaw of Columbian Mammoth, Elephas columbi.
Discovered in Ness County, Kansas.
How rich are the strata that compose the earth’s crust only a fossil hunter can fully realize. Take, for instance, western Kansas, where the soil beneath our feet is one vast cemetery. I know of a ravine in Logan County which cuts through four great formations. The lower levels, of reddish and blue chalk, are filled with the remains of swimming lizards, with the wonderful Pteranodonts, the most perfect flying machines ever known, with the toothed bird Hesperornis, the royal bird of the West, and the fish-bird Ichthyornis, with fish-like biconcave vertebræ, with fishes small and great (one form over sixteen feet long), and huge sea-tortoises. Above are the black shales of the Fort Pierre Cretaceous, thousands of feet of which are exposed in the bad lands of the upper Missouri. In this formation the dinosaurs reign supreme. Still higher are the mortar beds of the Loup Fork Tertiary, where the dominant type changes from reptiles to mammals. Here, in western Kansas, are found great numbers of the short-limbed rhinoceros, the large land-turtle, Testudo orthopygia, several inferior tusked mastodons, the saber-toothed tiger, the three-toed horse, and a deer only about eighteen inches high. Higher still, where the grass roots shoot down to feed on the bones, are the Columbian mammoth, the one-toed horse, like our species of to-day, a camel like our South American llama, and a bison far larger than the present species.
The living bison has become almost extinct itself, through the agency of man. And in the layer of soil which covers all these formations, an old arrowhead and the crumbling bones of a modern buffalo give an object lesson in the manner in which these relics of the earlier world have been preserved. So races of animals, as of men, reach their highest state of development, retrograde, and give place to other races, which, living in the same regions, obey the same laws of progress.
My readers will be pleased, I am sure, to know that just before these pages go to press I am permitted to tell the story of our last great hunt in Converse County, Wyoming, during July, August, and September, 1908, for the largest skull of any known vertebrate, the great three-horned dinosaur, Triceratops (Fig. [45]). Only thirteen good specimens are known to American museums, 7 of which are in Yale University Museum, and were collected, I believe, by J. B. Hatcher. From his field notes Mr. Hatcher has made a map of this region with crosses to indicate the localities in which skulls have been found, and 30 are so indicated, but I soon learned that he noted broken and poor material, as well as the more perfect. With my three sons I entered the region with enthusiasm on the hunt for one of these skulls for the British Museum of Natural History.
Fig. 45.—Three-horned Dinosaur, Triceratops sp.
Restoration by Osborn and Knight. (From painting in American Museum of Natural History.)
Fig. 46.—Duck-billed Dinosaur, Trachodon mirabilis.
Restoration by Osborn and Knight. (From painting in American Museum of Natural History.)