1902.] ])OUGLASS — CRETACEOUS AND LOWER TERTIARY. 219 



supposed to come from the uppermost portion of the Cretaceous — 

 the Laramie — but the other fossils found in these beds have not 

 been of a character to settle the doubt concerning the horizon. 

 There is no direct proof that the Dinosaurs died out before higher 

 forms of Mammals became numerous. Though they have not yet, 

 so far as I know, been found in the same beds, yet there seems good 

 reason for believing that Dinosaurs were contemporaneous with 

 Puerco Mammals. Were it not for the '^ Ceratops fauna" and the 

 discovery of a few specimens in the eastern United States and one 

 in Kansas, we should say that the Dinosaurs died out at the end of 

 the Jurassic. It would seem that if anything had a chance of being 

 preserved it would be the large, solid bones of these animals; yet 

 there are miles of thickness of strata and thousands of square miles 

 of exposure of Lower Cretaceous, Dakota and Colorado beds, and 

 nothing, I believe, has been found to tell that these animals still 

 lived in this great Cordilleran region, except the type of Claosaurus 

 agilis from the Niobrara of Nebraska. This rock must represent 

 many millions of years in which Dinosaurs lived, flourished and 

 progressed. To our view they disappear in their glory, and after 

 ages appear again in glory but transformed ; again they suddenly 

 disappear and we see them no more. The morning, midday and 

 evening of their splendor is lost to us. Until the discovery of the 

 beds described in this paper almost nothing was known of them in 

 the Montana formation, at least the beds from which they had been 

 collected had not been considered as belonging to that age. The 

 point the writer wishes to make is this : It is extremely unsafe to 

 say when and where these strange reptiles breathed their last, for 

 the presence of fossils is certain evidence of the existence of life, 

 but the lack of them is no evidence of its absence. Dinosaurs may 

 have continued long in the Eocene, but conditions in the places 

 where so many Mammalian remains have been found may not have 

 been favorable for them. 



I think we can hardly account for the general absence of Dino- 

 saur remains in the Kootenai and Upper Cretaceous, below the 

 Laramie, by the beds being in part marine. Much of the strata is 

 evidently fresh or brackish water. We should hardly expect to find 

 them in the Benton and Fort Pierre shales associated with large ma- 

 rine Mollusca, yet as previously stated we do fitid them in the latter. 

 This proves that these animals lived near the sea or where they 

 could float into it. Why don't we get them then in the many 



