IN THE LARAMIE BEDS OF WYOMING. 



125 



The entire region covering many 

 square miles is destitute of human 

 habitation except a sheep ranch or two 

 and a few sheep or cattle men. In 

 this solitude the writer and his three 

 sons entered last summer to collect 

 the wondrous dinosaurs, those 

 mighty lizards. The largest known 

 entire skeleton from an older forma- 

 tion, Diplodocus Carnegie was named 

 after the famous Iron King. It meas- 

 ures 17 feet high at the hips and is 82 

 feet in length. Here, in Converse Co., 

 Wyo., we spent several months with 



gin 



When these beds were elevated 

 above tide-water the water running off 

 them, descended into the fresh water 

 lakes of the Laramie age, and formed 

 her thousand feet of strata. Now these 

 semi- deserts are elevated 5,000 above 

 sea-level. Then they were near the 

 sea. In fact salt water beds are some- 

 times found in the formation. We 

 imagine it a country of morrasses and 

 bayous like the Everglades of Florida, 

 with narrow, deep, and sluggish 

 streams, that winds their sullen course 

 slowly among the cat tails, and swamp 



s**w. 



"QUARRYING" TO SECURE THOSE WONDROUS DINOSAURS 



our horses, wagon and tent. Before 

 we left the field we got 65 miles from 

 our base of supplies. The Laramie 

 Beds seem to occupy a great basin 

 whose outer rim consists of the yel- 

 lowish sandstones, of the Fox Hills 

 Group, filled with massive brown 

 concretions in which are numbers 

 of shells, Amonites, etc., all ma- 

 rine animals. Farther back are 

 the great deposits of clay, the 

 Fort Pierre Group, filled with alka- 

 line matter that permeates all the sur- 

 face and spring water. Here great 

 Baculites several feet in length and 

 other shells attest their salt water ori- 



grass ; while on the ridges between, 

 solid ground, the Palmatoe and other 

 trees flourish in great jungles of semi- 

 tropical growth. The silent glassy 

 flow of one of the streams suddenly 

 is agitated by the vibrations of a pow- 

 erful tail whose rapid undulatory mo- 

 tion casts off riffle after riffle of little 

 wavelets, that expand and spread to 

 either shore. Suddenly they cease, 

 and a huge head full three feet in 

 length, appears above the water, as 

 also the short, heavy neck that sup- 

 ports it. The head terminates in a 

 broad bill, shaped like that of a duck, 

 armed with a sharp cutting edge of 



