116 Kansds Academy of Science. 



armed feet, known to science as the most terrible of the carnivorous 

 dinosaurs. 



After a few days gases form in the stomach of the dead Tracho- 

 do", or duck-billed dinosaur, and raise the carcass which floats on 

 the water with back beneath and awns stretched out at right angles 

 to the body, driven head first with the current. The head drags 

 under the body as it drifts along; some hungry beetles have eaten 

 through the walls of the abdomen, the gases escape and the mighty 

 carcass, thirty feet from beak to end of tail, when the fleshy walls 

 of the abdomen collapse, sinks to rest and burial in the quicksands 

 below. The sand drifts into the body cavity and keep the walls in 

 their normal position. Ages pass. Slowly the sepulcher, with all 

 the continent west of the Mississippi, is raised to the tune of the 

 rushing waters of the Colorado, that cut with sand and gravel a 

 channel as rapidly as the country rises. A canon carves through 

 the graveyard of the Trachodon, cutting off and disintegrating the 

 tail and hind feet. But before further damage can be done, in the 

 year of our Lord 1908, late in August, two Sternbergs, with hungry 

 eyes for ancient bones, stumble upon the grave after weeks and 

 weeks of unremitting toil, and in a region that had been worked 

 for years by collectors. Yes^ after forty years' labor for science) 

 lest my pride in the discovery might be too much for me, my two 

 sons, Greorge and Levi, have earned the glory of discovering the 

 best specimen of a dinosaur of this form ever found. 



Time would fail me to tell of all the anxiety and labor before it 

 was delivered in the American Museum, in New York. And how, 

 with the assistance of Professor Osborn's ablest preparators, we un- 

 covered enough to show the bones lying in natural position, 

 wrapped in the impressions of its folding skin. I left New York 

 with the assurance that it would be mounted as in death. The 

 only necessary restorations are the hind feet, one tibia and fibula 

 and the tail, which had unfortunately been cut off by the wash. 

 The open mounts of two fine Jrachodon skeletons, and all that 

 may be found, must be changed to compare with this standard, as 

 its preparator was Grod Almighty. In addition to the facts enu- 

 merated, the contents of the stomach are carbonized within the ab- 

 dominal cavity, and the muscles have left their impressions above 

 the bones in the fine sandstone. With this skeleton before us, and 

 those already known, we shall become as familiar with the old duck- 

 bills as we are with the horse or ox or dog. 



