558 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



continent the record of the great land fauna of the Permian age is 

 very faulty and imperfect. It is only in some exceptional place where 

 large quantities of bones were swept together under favorable condi- 

 tions that they have been preserved and such an exceptional depository 

 occurs in northern Texas. 



When the Appalachian Mountains were raised an extension of 

 their southern end reached across what are now Arkansas and Okla- 

 homa, terminating in the Wichita Mountains in western Oklahoma. 

 North of this range rose a broad upland reaching from the Rockies 

 to the Appalachians and to the Canadian line on the north ; south of 

 the mountains a shallow sea reached nearly to their base, and some 



Fig. 1. View in Willbatcger County, Texas, showing the character of the 



beds in which the bones occur. 



great rivers, from the mountains and the uplands, poured their flood 

 waters into the sea and built up a great delta. The remains of animals 

 which haunted the banks of the rivers were swept into them in time 

 of flood and carried out to be deposited in the delta, which covered most 

 of what is now Wichita, Archer and Willbarger counties in the state of 

 Texas. Naturally most of the remains which found their way into the 

 streams were already fragmentary, as they had rotted on the bank and 

 been torn by predatory animals, but in their course to the sea they were 

 farther disintegrated, so that, rolled by the rivers and beaten by the 

 waves, they sank to their burial as little more than water- worn frag- 

 ments ; ends of limb bones, isolated vertebra? and broken skulls which do 



