CHAPTER XI 

 CONCLUSION 



MAY begin this closing chapter by men- 

 tioning some other specimens which I 

 have discovered, or which my sons have, 

 for, thank God, I have raised up a race of 

 fossil hunters. My second son, Charles M. Stern- 

 berg, has in his person recently fulfilled a dream of 

 forty years of my own, by discovering the most com- 

 plete skeleton known of Professor Marsh's great 

 toothed-bird, Hesperornis re galls, the Royal Bird 

 of the West. Unfortunately the skull is missing, 

 otherwise the nearly complete skeleton is present, 

 and strange to say in normal position, showing that 

 Dr. F. A. Lucas is right in his restoration of the 

 Martin specimen as mounted in the National 

 Museum, i. e., as a loon, a diver instead of a wader, 

 as had been supposed. Our specimen, however, 

 shows a much longer neck than he had imagined. 

 Strange indeed was this long-necked diver with its 

 tarsus at right angles with the body and its power- 

 ful web- footed feet. The body was narrow, a little 

 over four inches wide, with a backbone like the 



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