HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE LARAMIE PROBLEM. 



In 1869 Cope " published an elaborate paper 

 on American fossil vertebrates in which he laid 

 the foundation at least for a possible reference 

 of certain of the localities of the Missouri 

 River region to the Cretaceous. In discussing 

 Ischyrosaurus antiquus Leidy (p. 40), which 

 came from Moreau River in what is now South 

 Dakota, he said that the horizon may be "per- 

 haps of Cretaceous age," and under Hadro- 

 saurus? occidentalis Leidy (p. 98) he recorded 

 the horizon as " ? Cretaceous beds of Nebraska, 

 between Moreau and Grand rivers." In the 

 same paper he refers the badlands of the Judith 

 River to the upper Jurassic. 



About this time the United States Geological 

 Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, under the 

 direction of Clarence King, had reached that 

 stage of its work which permitted the publica- 

 tion of the first to appear of its final reports".^" 

 To this volume King contributed a number of 

 chapters, among them one on the geology of 

 the Green River Basin of Wyoming, in which 

 he held that the coal-bearing strata are of 

 Cretaceous age and are unconformably overlain 

 by fresh-water deposits of Tertiary age. On 

 this point he says (p. 453) : 



Near the summit of the 9,000 feet a looser texture begins, 

 and this change is rendered very noticeable by the intro- 

 duction of beds of coal, which for an unknown distance 

 upward, probably several thousand feet, reappear through 

 a zone of constantly changing sand and mud rocks. The 

 fossil life, which clearly indicates a Cretaceous age for the 

 deepest members up to and including the first two or 

 three important coal beds, from that point' gradually 

 changes with a corresponding alternation of sediments, 

 indicating a transition to a fresh- water period. The coal 

 continued to be deposited some time after the marine 

 fauna had been succeeded by fresh-water types. The 

 species of fossils are in no case identical with the Cali- 

 fornia Cretaceous beds, which occupy a similar geological 

 position on the west of the Sierra Nevadas. Their affinities 

 decidedly approach those of the Atlantic slopes, while the 

 fresh-water species, which are found in connection with 

 the uppermost coal beds, seem to belong to the early Ter- 

 tiary period. 



Regarding the unconformable relations of 

 the beds above mentioned to the overlying 

 Tertiary, he said (p. 455) : 



Whatever may be the relation of these beds in other 

 places, it is absolutely certain that within the region lying 

 between the Green River and the Wasatch and bounded 

 on the south by the Uintah Range there is no single in- 



" Cope, E. D., Synopsis of the extinct Batrachia, Heptilia, and Avcs 

 of North America: Am. Philos. Soc. Trans., vol. 14, pp. 1-252, 1869-70. 



» U. S. Geol. Expl. 40th Par. Rept., vol. 3, Mining industry, Wash- 

 ington, 1870. 



stance of conformity between the coal beds and the hori- 

 zontal fresh-water strata above them. 



This same chapter contains a report by F. B. 

 Meek on the fossil invertebrates of the region, 

 in which he made the following guarded state- 

 ment: 



With the exception of the genus Inoceramus. which is 

 certainly represented by two or three species, and perhaps 

 Anchura. all of these fossils, so far as their characters can 

 be made out. appear to be just such forms as might be 

 referred with about as much propriety to the Tertiary as to 

 the Cretaceous. In fact, it is probable, from the general 

 absence of characteristic Cretaceous types among them 

 (with the exceptions mentioned) that, if submitted to 

 almost any paleontologist not aware of the fact that the 

 specimens of Inoceramus and Anchura? occurred in the 

 same beds, the whole would be unhesitatingly referred to 

 the Tertiar,'. * * * From all the facts now known, I 

 can therefore scarcely doubt that you are right in referring 

 these beds to the Cretaceous. 



In this report Meek also discussed the age 

 of the so-called "Bear River Estuary beds," 

 a series of fresh-water beds contiguous to 

 Bear River in western Wyoming and eastern 

 Utah. A complete historical review of the 

 Bear River controversy, together with an 

 enumeration of its invertebrate fauna, was 

 given by C. A. White in 1895." A brief 

 exposition of this matter will be found on 

 page 78 of this report. 



The Fourth Annual Report of the Geological 

 Survey of the Territories, for 1870 (published 

 in 1871), was devoted to Wyoming and por- 

 tions of contiguous territories. In a brief 

 review of the geology of the Missouri River 

 region, which forms Chapter VII of this report 

 (pp. 85-98), Hayden again insisted upon the 

 Tertiary age of the "Fort Union or Great 

 Lignitic," and in support of this contention 

 quoted from Newberry's report on the fossil 

 plants as published in the Raj-nolds report 

 already mentioned. (See p. 6.) That Hay- 

 den had come to realize the possibility that the 

 coals of the West might not all be of Tertiary 

 age is shown by the following remark (p. 94) : 



The area which it [Fort Union] occupdes is not yet 

 known, but every year it is extended north, south, and 

 west. It is also characterized by numerous beds of coal, 

 or lignite as it was formerly called, and, so far as the 

 upper Missouri is concerned, .most of the coal is true 

 lignite. It is quite probable that the coal-making period 

 began in the later portion of the Cretaceous era and 

 extended up into the Tertiary. The observations of 



>' White, C. A., The Bear River formation and its characteristic faima: 

 U. S. Geol. Survey Bull. 128. 1895. 



