134 Ancient Giants 



CHAPTER XI 



THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS 



For days I had been exploring the brakes of 

 the Red Deer river in Alberta, Canada, for the 

 wonderful extinct dinosaurs of the Cretaceous 

 Period. They had only been known since 1876, 

 when the late Professor E. D. Cope made his fam- 

 ous expedition to the Bad-Lands of the Upper 

 Missouri, in the beds of the Judith River of Mon- 

 tana, 



I was exploring the valley of the Red Deer 

 River at Drumheller. A great chasm in fact, 

 cut by the river and its tributaries four hundred 

 feet deep into the Edmonton Series of the Upper 

 Cretaceous, out of the very heart of the prairie. 

 Across from plain to plain the distance averages 

 about two miles. Tributary creeks and coulees 

 have carved trenches further back into the plain ; 

 while in the main valley, especially near the 

 brink of the prairie, are long ridges, tablelands, 

 buttes and knolls, pinacles and towers, whose 

 bases often impinged on the ox-bows of the river 

 itself; down whose rugged sides a stone rolling 

 would bring up in a sudden halt, in the waters 

 four hundred feet below. All this region, except 

 of course the river channel and flood plain, was 

 transformed by nature's sculptury into fantastic 



