HISTORY OF DISCOVERY. 7 



For two or three years after the discovery of the type of Geratops alticornis Messrs. George L. 

 Cannon, George H. Eldridge, and Whitman Cross continued to find fragmentary remains of 

 horned dinosaurs in the Denver and Arapahoe(?) beds in the vicinity of Denver, especially on 

 and about the slopes of Green Mountain, an elevation rising about 1,000 feet above the plains, 

 just without the foothills of the main eastern range of the mountains, about midway between 

 Golden and Morrison and just west of the city of Denver. None of these remains were suffi- 

 ciently complete to permit a determination of even the more important characters of these 

 dinosaurs, and their true nature still remained unknown. 



DISCOVERY OF WELL-PRESERVED REMAINS OF CERATOPSIA IK CONVERSE 



COUNTY, WTO. 



In the summer of 1888, under the direction of Prof. O. C. Marsh, I undertook an expedi- 

 tion for the purpose of collecting vertebrate fossils in the Judith River badlands of the upper 

 Missouri River, a locality already rendered classic by the researches of Hayden, Leidy, and 

 Cope. While this expedition was not especially successful, 14 boxes (about a ton) of rather 

 fragmentary material was procured, including the skull fragments figured by Marsh and made 

 the type of the new genus and species Geratops montanus, a for which a new family, Ceratopsidse, 

 was at the same time proposed. Notwithstanding their fragmentary nature the remains 

 demonstrated the presence of horned dinosaurs in these deposits, a fact which had previously 

 been suspected by Cope. 6 At the same time they threw much new light on the affinities' of 

 the material previously collected by Hayden, Cope, Cannon, and others. 



After passing some two months in the Judith River badlands with very indifferent success, 

 in the early autumn of the same year (1888), at the instance of Professor Marsh, I proceeded to 

 southern Wyoming to investigate the remains of a fossil vertebrate discovered by Mr. Louis 

 Lamotte, just south of the Seminole Mountains, on the west side of the North Platte River, 

 about 1 mile from that stream and 40 miles below Fort Steele. These remains proved to belong 

 to the Ceratopsidse, although this was not then suspected by me. There were present parts 

 of the skull, vertebrae, ribs, and other portions of the skeleton, all in such a fragmentary and 

 decomposed condition as to render their determination impossible, in the light of what was 

 then known of these dinosaurs. 



After spending some time in this vicinity in a fruitless search for more perfect remains, 

 I decided to abandon this locality and proceed to the White River badlands, lying east of the 

 Black Hills in South Dakota, and pass the remainder of the season in making still further 

 collections of the fossil mammalia so abundant in that classic locality. While en route I 

 stopped at Douglas, Wyoming, and there met a former acquaintance, Mr. Deforest Richards, 

 afterwards governor of Wyoming, now deceased, who introduced me to Mr. Charles A. Guern- 

 sey. This gentleman, having a general but enthusiastic, interest in matters relating to natural 

 history, and especially to geology and paleontology, had, through a long residence in the country 

 as manager and owner of the "Three- Nine" cattle ranch, succeeded in bringing together a 

 considerable collection of fossils. On inspecting this collection, through the kindness and at 

 the request of Mr. Guernsey, I was impressed with its value, for it contained many specimens 

 of great perfection and beauty, and only a glance was needed to show that the entire lot had 

 been brought together with great judgment and discrimination, such as are rarely seen in 

 amateurs and such as might with profit be emulated even in some of our public museums, 

 especially in their exhibition series. 



Among the many interesting things in this collection I was at once struck with the frag- 

 ment of a very large horn core. This fragment was about 18 inches long and perhaps 8 inches 

 in least diameter at the base, which was hollow, the cavity being filled with a hard, brown 

 sandstone closely resembling the sandstone concretions that are so abundant in the Laramie. 

 On inquiry Mr. Guernsey informed me that the specimen had been taken from a skull several 

 feet in length which had been found by his ranch foreman, Mr. Edmund B. Wilson, completely 



<■ A new family of horned Dinosauria, from the Cretaceous: Am. Jour. Sci., 3d ser., vol. 36, December, 1SS9 pp. 477-478. 

 & See Bull. U. S. Geol. and Geog. Surv. Terr., vol. 3, p. 592. 



