The Edmonton Beds 45 



back and tail together. They were likely flexible 

 as whale-bone in life. 



The figure 8 shows the skeleton as now mounted 

 in the Victora Memorial Museum, of Ottawa, On- 

 tario. It was no easy undertaking to save and 

 mount this wonderfully complete skeleton; it 

 was buried in fine sandy clay that was cracked in 

 all directions, as were the bones, checked into 

 thousands of fragments. Only our years of ex- 

 perience in the field, and my faith in the skill 

 and patience of Charlie gave me courage to be 

 lieve that it could ever be mounted. It could 

 never have been saved, but for knowledge of the 

 plaster process of collecting. 



I will try and give my readers the process by 

 which we not only kept the bones (broken into 

 countless fragments and ready to fall into pow 

 der ) , in their places, but saved the shattered ma- 

 trix in which they were embedded. My whole 

 party worked in what I call for a better term 

 "a quarry." The first thing to do was to remove 

 with pick and shovel the loose sand and clay and 

 lay bare a floor in the cliff large enough so we 

 would have plenty of elbow room, and could 

 work down around the skeleton. We first traced 

 the latteral spines so there was no danger of 

 digging into the bones from above. This work 

 was done with a digger and crooked awl, and 

 only the merest trace of the bones were develop- 

 ed; when bones were exposed, they were instant- 

 ly filled with shellac. They fall to powder on ex- 



