CHAPTER V 



DISCOVERY OF THE LOUP FORK BEDS 



OF KANSAS AND SUBSEQUENT 



WORK THERE, 1877 AND 1882-84 



BOUT the first of July, 1877, I received 

 orders to go north to the Loup Fork 

 River in Nebraska to search for verte- 

 brate fossils in beds of the Upper Mio- 

 cene, called by Hayden the Loup Fork Group. I 

 happened to meet, however, an old line hunter, 

 Abernathy by name, who had brought into Buffalo 

 his last load of buffalo hides, and he told me that a 

 little above his cabin, on the middle branch of Sappa 

 Creek in Decatur County, there was the skull of a 

 mastodon, sticking out of the solid rock. 



As a visit to his house would not take me far out 

 of my way, I followed his lead ; and thanks to the 

 observation of this old hunter, who was scalped in 

 front of his door the next year by a band of hostile 

 Kiowas, I had the privilege of discovering the rich 

 fossil beds of the Loup Fork Group in northwestern 

 Kansas, and found enough to do without crossing 

 into Nebraska. 



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