124 HUNTING EXTINCT ANIMALS 



could pick up a little more feed. Such prospecting is 

 lonesome work, especially where even the few people one 

 meets cannot speak one's language. 



On the fourth of this month, a few miles south of the 

 beginning of the river, and a little above the basal layer of 

 lava he found the first traces of dinosaur bones, over the 

 presence of which there has been in the past so much 

 discussion. In the northern hemisphere this group of 

 gigantic reptiles died out by the end of the Cretaceous 

 epoch, but in South America Ameghino found some of their 

 bones commingled with the bones of mammals of the Eocene 

 types. This could, if true, be interpreted in two ways; 

 either that in South America the dinosaurs lived to a later 

 period than elsewhere, or that there the mammals arose 

 earlier. The latter was the interpretation Ameghino 

 put on his finds; while the former is the one more recently 

 advocated. But the fact of the contemporaneous occur- 

 rence of these two types of animals was doubted, especially 

 by Hatcher. Since then Roth has confirmed that the bones 

 of the two groups do occur in the same strata, and it was 

 a point on which we were especially anxious to get some 

 first-hand data. 



Next day Billy continued his work along this stratum, 

 coming to the south of Lake Colhue-Huapi, and in beds 

 either of the same age or older than those in which he had 

 found dinosaur bones, he found a small collection of bones 

 of the Notostylopus types. In getting to these bluffs 

 he started across the bottom of a dry lake. The surface 

 proved treacherous and as he expresses it he "got stuck sev- 

 eral times and almost lost Blackie." He worked here all 

 day and that night "camped near lake shore, the coun- 

 try barren, no feed for horse, some ostriches and guanaca 

 about, ate some berries to satisfy hunger." 



From here he proceeded toward the Pueblo Sarmiento 

 which is the small town in the midst of the mixed colony 

 of the same name. When the Boers came to Patagonia 



