July 23, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



133 



nearly those of the Dead Lodge Canyon on the 

 Red Deer River. Two things have especially 

 impressed me: First, the close resemblance 

 between the Judith River Beds and the Belly 

 River series in the Dead Lodge Canyon where 

 the Fort Pierre on top and Belly River series 

 below are nearly 500 feet thick. Towards its 

 lower end a sandstone like the Eagle is ex- 

 posed. The second is the finding of a footed 

 ischium of a trachodont in the same bed from 

 which the type of Trachodon mirabilis, of 

 Leidy, was discovered, the same teeth to which 

 he gave the name lying around the ischium. 

 That evidently belongs to Lambe's Stephano- 

 saurus marginaius : a crested trachodont. My 

 party has already discovered three trachodonts 

 in the Belly River series, two with footed 

 ischia and one Lambe's Gryposaurus notdbilis, 

 has an uncrested head. "We have only found 

 among our forty tons of fossil dinosaurs col- 

 lected there a single species of Trachodon. 

 The one we mounted from the Edmonton is 

 certainly one. Is it possible, then, that 

 Leidy's Trachodon mirabilis was a crested 

 duck-bill? This is a question impossible of 

 solution, as the type tooth might have come 

 from one of three or four of the Trachodonts of 

 the Belly River series. Then the use by Marsh 

 of two horn cores to found the genus Ceratops 

 on and the family Ceratopsia rests on a shaky 

 foundation along with Cope's Monoclonius. 

 These horns of Marsh might have come from 

 any of the horned dinosaurs of that time ex- 

 cept Centrosaurus, and in spite of the splendid 

 and complete skulls of horned dinosaurs we 

 have secured from the Belly River series we 

 know nothing of Monoclonius except what 

 little, if anything, can be learned from the 

 types. 



Then the richness of the fauna in genera 

 and species both of duck-billed, plated, horned 

 and carnivorous dinosaurs, was at high tide 

 during Belly River time. The formation, 

 therefore, must have covered a wide area, and 

 it is not surprising to know that Brown got a 

 Gryposaurus skull in New Mexico. A thor- 

 ough exploration of the beds in Montana will 

 doubtless yield rich returns. It is also inter- 

 estiiSj to note that I got a plated dinosaur 



some years ago in the Niobrara Chalk of Kan- 

 sas, described by Weiland, doubtless a near 

 relative of Lambe's Europlocephalus from the 

 Red Deer River. Evidently then the Cre- 

 taceous dinosaurs continued to live and thrive 

 through Cretaceous time in the west, but few 

 bones found lodgment in the ocean sediment 

 of thousands of feet of Dakota, Fort Benton, 

 Niobrara, Fort Pierre and Fox Hills groups. 

 It appears evident, too, that the life of the 

 Pierre ocean was continuous with the Belly 

 River, whose shores were only raised a few 

 feet above tide water. Many Plesiosaurs found 

 entrance to the freshwater lakes and mingled 

 their bones with the reptilian fauna. Hatcher 

 himself once told me he believed all the beds 

 of the Judith River region were Pierre from 

 top to bottom, though I suppose land, fresh 

 water and marine beds will always be known 

 by different names. 



Charles H. Sternberg 



the travertine record of blake sea 

 An outlying mass of fragmental granite 

 projects from a spur of the Santa Rosa Moun- 

 tains into the Cahuilla basin in southeastern 

 California, the crest of the rocks rising above 

 the ancient shore line of Blake Sea, which 

 filled the basin to a level, something above that 

 of present high tide in the Gulf of California.^ 

 This cape is designated as " Travertine 

 Point " in our publications, as the surface of 

 the granite boulders is covered to a varying 

 depth with dendritic and lithoid tufa.^ Some 

 marks and figures presumably carved by 

 Indians in the travertine have long been 

 known and were seen by us on our first visit to 

 the place in 1906. In the continuation of our 

 work on the Salton Sea it was realized that 

 these figures might possibly yield some evi- 

 dence as to the duration, and variations in 

 level of the ancient Blake Sea, and of the 

 smaller modern Salton Lake. 



A visit to the formation was accordingly 



1 See Plate 1, ' ' The Salton Sea, ' ' MaeDougal, 

 et al., Publ. Carnegie Institution of Washington, 

 No. 193, 1914. 



2 See Jones, J. C, ' ' The Geologie History of 

 Lake Lahontan," Science, XL., p. 827, 1914. 



