THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



711 



AN EXCURSION INTO THE FIELD OF WESTERN 



FOSSILS 



""THE passenger department of the Union Pacific Rail- 

 1 road has revived great interest in the further ex- 

 ploration of the wonderful fossil fields of Wyoming, which 

 are widely known in this country and whose peculiar value 

 to scientists has long been established, by inviting a num- 

 ber of scientific men to visit that part of Wyoming and 

 make personal investigation of the fields. These men went 

 as guests of the Union Pacific Railroad and were escorted 

 by an official of the company. 



So many inquiries have constantly been received ask- 

 ing for full and detailed information regarding the dis- 

 coveries that the passenger department of the Union 

 Pacific Railroad has issued a booklet giving the impres- 

 sions of some of the men of science who made this visit 

 and describing in detail the geology of the Laramie plains 

 and the topography of central Arizona. 



Professor W. C. Knight of the University of Wyom- 

 ing was in charge of the expedition. 



Professor J. A. Yates, professor of natural sciences of 

 the Ottawa University of Kansas, thus describes the ex- 

 pedition: 



Columbian, the Wyoming University and Kansas Univer- 

 sity Museums. 



"The hundreds of square miles of these beds contain- 

 ing thousands of tons of the bones of these huge verte- 

 brates, some of which are exposed by erosion each year, 

 impresses one with the vastness of the burying ground 

 over which we were traveling and the history of its forma- 

 tion and inhabitants while it was a low marshy plain. 

 These bones are imbedded in a pale bluish-green stratum 

 of clay varying in thickness from twenty to fifty feet. This 

 stratum is easily found and recognized, being immediately 

 above the shale overlying the Triassic red sandstones, 

 under which is a layer where the belemnites are found 

 very abundantly. Above the dinosaur stratum is a thick 

 layer of sandstone, and boulders from this often tumble 

 down dragging the bones among the talus, often making 

 it difficult to determine the exact point from which the 

 bones came. 



"From our camp at Freezeout Mountains by three 

 marches we arrived at the Grand Canon of the Platte. 

 Here the Platte river has cut a channel with almost verti- 



Baptannodon Reedi Bones Found in a Quarry North of Union Pacific Railroad. 



"Two days after arriving in Laramie, the expedition 

 moved to the west, making a circle, the terminus of the 

 trip to be the Grand Canon of the Platte river. We 

 passed over excellent collecting grounds both in plant and 

 invertebrate fossils, and on the eighth day of the trip we 

 arrived at Aurora, the historic dinosaur field, where Pro- 

 fessor Marsh of Yale, more than thirty years ago, dis- 

 covered the bones of these immense lizards which are 

 fully described in the sixteenth annual report of the Geo- 

 logical Survey. 



"Here quite a number of specimens were found, and 

 after remaining a day and two nights, we started for 

 Freezeout Mountains, going by way of Medicine Bow, a 

 small station on the Union Pacific Railroad. In these 

 mountains the expedition was on virgin dinosaur fields 

 and, so far as I know, every member of the party found 

 and shipped some specimens of these bones. The writer, 

 in connection with Prof. S. B. Brown of West Virginia 

 University, found five vertebrae, two large femora and 

 quite a number of large pieces of other bones of these 

 animals. In this region we saw the bones that are being 

 excavated by the American Museum people, also the Field 



cal sides a thousand feet deep, through the strata for a 

 distance of nine miles. Owing to the arduous task of 

 entering the canon, at many places this being impossible, 

 the study of the exposed strata at close range becomes 

 somewhat difficult. The writer, in company with Lieu- 

 tenant Murphy of Wyoming University, entered the canon 

 and drank from the rushing river. None of our company 

 were daring enough to attempt to go through the canon, 

 although we were told that only one man had ever suc- 

 ceeded who attempted it. On approaching the canon it 

 was seen that we were on a rolling plain, indented here 

 and there with small streams that had made rather deep 

 channels for this country. However, I am sure it would 

 never occur to a stranger that only two or three hundred 

 yards in front of him was a chasm a thousand feet deep. 

 "Almost instantly you perceive there is a great canon 

 in front where a moment ago you thought it was a per- 

 fect plain. Then you undertake to enter it through a 

 ravine and travel many times the distance it was sup- 

 posed to be, and of a sudden you find yourself standing 

 on an immense strata of rock, a step more would land you 

 six or seven hundred feet below in a stream, which rushes 



