50 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



the stairs on the right (Fig. 8) ; and a little further 

 on, is a splendid skull of the same species, which 

 I discovered on Butte Creek, in Logan County. 

 Fig. 9 shows a restoration of this species. 



Doubtless many of the ankylosed bones which 

 we fossil hunters often find in the chalk of the Nio- 

 brara Group of the Cretaceous were broken by blows 

 from these ram-nosed lizards. 



We have in Kansas three genera of these mosa- 

 saurs as the celebrated Frenchman, Cuvier, named 

 them in 1808. The word literally means a reptile 

 of the Meuse, and it was given them because the 

 first specimen ever found was taken from the quar- 

 ries under the city of Maestricht, on the River 

 Meuse. For this information, and for much more 

 as to the anatomy of the Kansas mosasaurs, I am 

 indebted to Dr. Williston's splendid work in Volume 

 IV of the University Geological Survey of Kansas : 

 Paleontology, Part I; although, of course, I ob- 

 tained most of my knowledge from the hundreds of 

 specimens which I collected myself. 



Among these are four especially fine specimens, 

 nearly complete, of the flat-wristed Platccarpus 

 coryphccus Cope. One of them I sent to the Iowa 

 State University, with head, column, and limbs 

 nearly in position, and still bedded in their native 

 chalk. This fellow, who was over eighteen feet 

 long, must have sunk so deep in the slimy mud of 



