48 Kayisas Academy of Science. 



during Tertiary time must often give way, as in this locality, to 

 river and flood plain, I noticed, as I walked over the open prairie 

 to the bad-lands I explored, the remains of sheep that had died 

 here and there and left complete skeletons, or a few bones and skull, 

 or a single skull. Birds and coyotes had scattered the remaining 

 parts of the skeletons. And so when I walked into the steep and 

 denuded fossil beds I found as abundantly the remains of the 

 oreodont — a skeleton here, a fragmentary one there; here a skull, 

 there a pile of bones. They had died under similar conditions, 

 perhaps, and lay in death a prey to wolves, etc. When the river 

 overflowed her banks the scattered remains were covered and are 

 preserved to this day, and the weathering of the rock has exposed 

 them to the light of day again, after ages of burial. Now, owing 

 to the eflPorts of us fossil hunters, we add other pages to Nature's 

 great picture book that tells the stcry of the past. 



My paper, a record of our work in the fossil fields, would not be 

 complete without an account of my son George F. Sternberg's 

 expedition into the rich field of the Niobrara, of western Kansas, 

 which I have cultivated since 1875. This year he had full control, 

 and I was not with him, and gladly give him credit for the best 

 single year's collection we have ever taken out of the chalk. He 

 had as his assistant Mr. Abe Easton, of Quinter, Kan., who proved 

 an able helper. Among the noted specimens is the most complete 

 skeleton so far discovered of the great fish Portheus molossus. 

 All the fins were present, for the first time, with the complete 

 skeleton, except the head, which we have been so fortunate to ob- 

 tain from another individual of the same size. This skeleton lies 

 on its side and is fourteen feet long; the tail fins thirty-one inches 

 long. When this specimen has been described its entire anatomy 

 will be known for the first time, although first described by Pro- 

 fessor Cope in 1872. Another fine specimen is the complete hind 

 limbs, with part of the skull, of Pteranodon ingens. Doctor 

 Eaton, the authority on pterodactyls at Yale, told me that though 

 they had 500 specimens, this was the first one in which all the 

 bones of the feet were in position. This specimen has gone to the 

 American museum. 



Of the wonderful snout fish, or Protophyrcena, of the Niobrara, 

 George found a complete set of pectoral fins, with their arches. 

 They measure 3 feet and 9 inches in length and are 10-1 inches 

 wide at the base. The enameled edge is as sharp as a knife. In 

 life they stood out at right angles to the body, like the scythes 

 attached to the wheels of the chariot of some ancient war king. 



