First Expedition to Kansas Chalk 57 



ing a number of wooden pegs of various lengths 

 under the broken fragments, so as to push them up 

 into their places and hold them firmly there. All 

 the excelsior was then taken away from beneath 

 them, a frame of lumber made around the section, 

 and the whole space rilled with plaster which held 

 all the broken bones in place. 



In this specimen I found for the first time a com- 

 plete column of eighty-five vertebrae, a very im- 

 portant find, as these vertebrae are of so nearly the 

 same size that in restoring an incomplete specimen 

 there was no way of estimating how many of them 

 there ought to be, and for anything to the contrary, 

 one might go on adding them indefinitely, as a cer- 

 tain man in Europe added an enormous number to 

 his mounted specimen of a Zeuglodon. 



This now famous specimen is mounted above the 

 Bourne Tylosaur, in the corridor of the Halls 

 of Paleontology, at the American Museum. Dr. 

 Henry Fairfield Osborn, in his report describing it, 

 says : " The noble specimen of which a preliminary 

 description is here given, adds another to the many 

 services which Mr. Charles H. Sternberg has ren- 

 dered to vertebrate paleontology. It was secured 

 by him in the year 1900, near Elkader, Logan 

 County, Kansas. Originally the specimen had been 

 probably complete, but portions of the skeleton, es- 

 pecially the ribs and spines, were injured and partly 



