34 MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY 



One may enter the exhibition room of the Zoological Section of 

 the University Museum (i. e. The Museum of Comparative Zoology) 

 from two directions. Many visitors pass directly from the exhibit of 

 Economic Botany to the Marine Mammal Room or to that in which 

 the North American birds are shown. Many other visitors enter the 

 Main Door facing the Quadrangle on Divinity Avenue. The guide 

 book is arranged as if all visitors entered in this way. Other visitors 

 may easily orient themselves by observing the numbers on the doors 

 of the rooms and seeking the corresponding number in this guide. 



On entering the ground floor of the main entrance one finds, in an 

 alcove immediately at one's right hand, an immense slab of the re- 

 mains of many individuals of the fossil Rhinoceros (Diceratherium) 

 from Agate Springs, Nebraska. This slab, the largest of its kind ever 

 collected, was taken from the side of a butte rising several hundred 

 feet over the layer bearing the bony remains. The area is one where 

 great herds of animals perished in quicksand which were probably 

 later redeposited by river action. The bones will be observed to lie in 

 extraordinary confusion. With the increasing drying up of the 

 country, deposition of sand took place on a large scale. After long 

 ages erosion cut away a large portion of this extensive deposition and 

 exposed the bony-bearing layer. Descriptive and illustrative labels 

 and pictures help explain this exhibit. 



The four Alaskan Moose heads show noteworthy horn develop- 

 ment; the one just to the left of the door being unusually massive. 



In the alcove to the left is a slab of Climactichnites from northern 

 New York. These tracks represent the resting impressions and the 

 trails of a problematical animal which lived in very early geological 

 times. Opinions differ as to whether these were the tracks of a 

 mollusc, a crustacean or some creature as yet unknown to science. 



In the hall beyond the stairway are portraits of Louis Agassiz and 

 Alexander Agassiz and busts of Alexander Agassiz and Francis C. 

 Gray, the Museum's first benefactor. On the wall opposite the por- 

 traits is the partially restored fossil skeleton of a giant flying reptile 

 (Pteranodon). Great creatures of this nature flew, probably while 

 fishing, over the ancient Cretaceous seas of Kansas, and falling into 

 the shallow water were occasionally preserved in the ooze of the bot- 

 tom — now a dry chalky deposit. 



On an adjoining wall is a very fine skeleton of the primitive Trias- 



