1. ASTROPKCTKX? MONTANUS — A NEW STAR-FISH 



FROM THE FORT BENTON; AND SOME 



GEOLOGICAL NOTES. 



Bv Earl Douglass. 



In ( )<tol)er, 1901, after finishing my collecting work for the Prince- 

 ton Museum in the region of the Musselshell River in Montana, my 

 father and myself started westward with team and camj^ng outfit to 

 reexamine the Miocene deposits in the \icinity of Three Forks. We 

 followed the Musselshell River to the source of its southern fork and 

 passed over the divide into the valley of the South Fork of Smith 

 River. Here, near Dorsey Station, the cream-colored nodular clays of 

 the Deep River beds form (juite high benches, while the lower benches 

 and sage-brush flats are composed of softer material of lighter color. 

 The latter look like the Lower White River beds as seen in other por- 

 tions of western Montana ; and, though no fossils were found, there is 

 little doubt that the beds belong to this horizon. I do not think that 

 the occurrence of White River beds has previously been noted in the 

 Smith River valley. 



From here we went southwestward, passing down the rugged, pictur- 

 esque cailon of Sixteen Mile Creek. Flere the Carboniferous lime- 

 stones form huge walls, high pinnacles, and rugged masses, which are 

 irregularly stained with red, giving them a fantastic appearance. The 

 Madison division contains some fossils, as it does in nearly every place 

 where it is exposed ; though the fossils are not so abundant here as in 

 some localities. 



South of the main stream of Sixteen Mile Creek, in the foot-hills at 

 the north end of the Bridger Range, about twenty-five miles north of 

 Bozeman, we stopped at the house of Mr. Urquhart. Ascending a 

 ridge composed principally of igneous material just east of the house, 

 we found, near the top, a layer of hard, compact, gray, iron-stained 

 rock, crowded with fossil leaves. This probably belongs to the Living- 

 ston formation. 



We remained about three days in order to examine the canon of the 

 South Fork of Sixteen Mile Creek where Mr. Urquhart and his sons 

 had fbimd many fossils. 



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