RECONNAISSANCE IN COLORADO AND UTAH 639 
and also beneath a series of variegated beds that resemble these in this 
section.”’ No mention of even the general character of these fossils 
is made, nor can I find any further reference to them in the publica- 
tions of the Hayden Survey. Personal inquiry of both Messrs. Holmes 
and Peale brings out the fact that after the lapse of many years spent 
in other lines of work, neither geologist is able to recall the basis for 
the statement that such fossils had been discovered, nor can records 
in regard to them be found. As the observations of the last 30 years 
do not indicate the existence of Cretaceous fossils in the position 
referred to, it must be assumed that the statement is an error, the 
origin of which cannot now be fixed. 
The McElmo beds in characteristic development were seen by 
us in Dry Valley and on the eastern flanks of La Sal Mountains, 
in Dolores Valley, and in many places on Uncompahgre Plateau, as 
far north as Unaweep Canyon. ‘To the north from that locality 
Peale refers to the formation as maintaining the same general 
character. No representative of the Marine Jurassic reported by 
Powell (33) and others from Utah was observed by us. 
Rumors of large bones, presumably in the McElmo beds, have 
come to my attention several times in recent years, but never with 
exact locality named, and no trace of such remains has been found 
in the San Juan region. 
The McElmo beds of Dry Valley are fossiliferous, locally, at least, 
as proven by Newberry, who found saurian bones in place at about 
500 feet below the Dakota (28, p. 91), in the southeastern branch 
of Dry Valley, named by him Cafion Pintado or Painted Cafion. 
From Newberry’s description of the locality and our own observations 
of the Cafion Pintado from the mesa to the west, as well as on the 
route traversed through Dry Valley, it is certain that the saurian 
bones came from the McElmo. Newberry expressed no positive 
opinion as to the age of the bone-bearing horizon, but called it “‘ Juras- 
sic(?)’? in his ‘‘General section of the Valley of the Colorado” (28, 
Pp: 99): 
The saurian bones found by Newberry were described by Cope 
(2, p. 31) as the type of Dystropheus viemale, and were said in 
positive, but quite unwarrantable, terms to have come from the Triassic, 
with no suggestion of the provisional assignment to the Jurassic by 
