Geological Papers. 71 



THE LOUP FORK MIOCENE OF WESTERN KANSAS. 



By Charles H. Sternberg, Lawrence. 



TT may seem like telling an old story to speak in this Academy 

 -■- of the Upper Miocene formation. However, as the writer made 

 the first large collection of vertebrate fossils in it, and has spent 

 five seasons there, including the one just past, he hopes to give 

 some information of value in connection therewith. 



For countless ages animals have lived out their allotted span, 

 have fought the ever-recurring fight for food and life, and they were 

 finally stricken down by their fellow creatures or by the pitiless 

 forces of nature. The same blind forces covered the remains in 

 the ooze of old ocean, the silt of the lake, or backwater from an 

 ancient stream overflowing its flood-plain, covering the bones with 

 loads of sand or mud. In the course of centuries the burial-places 

 are lifted high and dry, and by the denudation of land in excavat- 

 ing some river valley or during the recession of cliffs their bones 

 are exposed. Under the patient skill of the collector they are se- 

 cured from their resting-places. In the past fifty years many noble 

 skeletons of the animals have been gathered into museums. Men 

 of wealth are collecting the faunae of many geological horizons, so 

 that it is now possible to get a good idea of the ancient history of 

 animal life on our earth. 



It should humble us "lords of creation." Like the older Agassiz, 

 we should uncover our heads when we enter a paleontological 

 museum, for we stand in the presence of the wonderful works of 

 the creator — works which until only recently has man looked upon 

 with intelligent eyes. In July, 1877, the writer was ordered north 

 from Buffalo Park by Prof. E. D. Cope, in search of fossil verte- 

 brates in the valley of the Loup Fork of Nebraska. An old-line 

 hunter, Abernathy by name, chanced to be at Buffalo selling his 

 last lot of buffalo hides. He spoke of a skull of an elephant in a 

 ledge of sandstone above his cabin. Following this information, 

 the writer, with his assistants, Russell T. Hill and Wilbur Brouse, 

 was delighted to find the first Loup Fork vertebrate he ever col- 

 lected. It was a great land turtle. These rocks are too old for the 

 elephant ; the top of the carapace was so exposed as to seem to an 

 ordinary observer like the back of the head of a large beast. This 

 find was on the middle fork of Sappa creek, some fifteen miles above 

 Oberlin, which place then consisted of a store building in which a 



