An upland sandpiper, one of many birds that can be seen at Agate Fossil Beds, perches on a fence post.
Professor Cope and his crews often worked the same localities as Marsh. Like Marsh, Cope tried to get the best specimens, and each occasionally outbid the other for them, leaving bewildered farmers and ranchers to puzzle over these men’s obsession with the past. Conflict also arose over the naming of animals previously unknown to science.
The hills of Agate Springs Ranch proved to be a rich archive of ancient life. Dr. Barbour and his students confined their efforts to what soon became known as University Hill. Thus began a quiet rivalry with Olaf Peterson and his crew from the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who worked what became known as Carnegie Hill. The most numerous fossils these teams found at Agate are the remains of the pony-sized rhinoceros Menoceras, but the site also is known for fossils of the gazelle-like camel Stenomylus, the early small horse Miohippus, and the corkscrew burrows of an ancient beaver, Palaeocastor.
Other distinguished scientists visited Agate over several decades. Among them were Henry Fairfield Osborn and Albert Thompson of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The collections these men made at Agate are still being studied and exhibited.
James and Kate Cook’s older son Harold caught the fever, too. He became a trained geologist and in 1910 married another geologist, Eleanor Barbour, daughter of the distinguished Nebraska geologist. The new generation of Cooks continued the tradition of hospitality and scientific interest, encouraging further excavations of the fossil treasures of Agate. Perhaps Harold Cook’s greatest moment of scientific glory came in 1926, when he and other scientists participated in the finds at Folsom, New Mexico, which proved to be a turning point in the study of the human prehistory of North America. George McJunkin, a black cowboy, had spotted the ribs of an animal protruding from the banks of an arroyo. The Folsom spearpoint and the bones of an extinct form of bison found there indicated that humans had lived on this continent for more than 10,000 years, a startling revelation at that time though today scientists put the figure at more than 40,000 years.
Next to the fence stands a windmill, which once provided water for excavation teams.
The narrow Niobrara River winds through the surrounding tableland, carving out bluffs and exposing occasional fossils.