73 
The Lance formation makes rugged bluffs along the river from 
Miles City to Forsyth. This formation extends across North Dakota, 
Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The coal or lignite beds 
that characterize it in many places and the fossil leaves and branches 
that have been found almost everywhere in the sandstone and shale 
composing it show clearly that it was laid down in lakes and ponds. 
It is also certain that at the time it was deposited great forests 
flourished over much of the area of the States mentioned, where are 
now the treeless wastes of the Great Plains. The trees of that time 
were similar to those of the Fort Union epoch, as described on page 
57. The formation of coal beds means that the land was flat and 
probably at low level. The plains country and much of that which 
is now mountainous was at that time low and swampy, supporting a 
luxuriant tangle of large trees, underbrush, vines, and water plants. 
The strange creatures that roamed through that ancient forest or 
THE NORTHERN PACIFIC ROUTE. 
swam in its shallow lakes are described below by Charles W. Gilmore, 
of the United States National Museum.! 
* Where vegetation grew as luxuriantly 
as in the swamps and lowlands of Lance 
time there must have been animals to 
tion is noted for the remains of great rep- 
tiles that it contains, and all the 
museums of the country have skeletons 
or models of these wonderful dinosaurs, 
as they are called. 
One of the best-known dinosaurs is 
called Triceratops (meaning literally 
three-horned face), so named because h 
had over each eye a m e horn di- 
rected forward and terminating in a long, 
sharp point and a third, but much smaller 
horn, on the nose, not unlike that of the 
modern rhinoceros. A mounted skeleton 
of Triceratops in the National Museum in 
Washington is about 20 feet long and 
stands 8 feet high at the hips. Some of 
skulls that have been found measure 
more than 8 feet, or nearly one-third of 
the length of the entire animal, includ- 
ing the tail. The great length of skull 
is due to the fact that the neck was pro- 
tected by a bony frill, which projected 
backward from the skull like a fireman’s 
helmet or like the large ruffs that were 
worn in een Elizabeth’s time. Al- 
though the brain of this dinosaur is large, 
it is, when the size of the skull is taken 
into consideration, relatively smaller than 
that of any other known land animal. 
That Triceratops was a fighter is shown 
by the finding of broken and healed bones. 
A pair of horns in the National Museum 
bear mute witness to such an encounter, 
for they had been broken and then 
rounded over and healed while the ani- 
mal was alive. 
In the earlier restorations or models of 
this animal, as shown in Plate X (p. 74), 
the skin was represented as being smooth 
and leathery, but in a specimen recently 
discovered the well-preserved skin shows 
that it was made up of a series of scales of 
various sizes. 
Triceratops, as indicated by the struc- 
_ture of his teeth, was manifestly a plant- 
shrubs. Hatcher, the most noted col- 
lector of Triceratops in the United States, 
1 = +1 
GULLY @bl ile LAC LeSe 
cil 
E og 7 
animals lived as being made up of vast 
waters were not too deep, was covered by 
an abundant = 2 
the huge dinosaurs as well as by croco- 
lil ae di - tir 
, alligators, turtles, 
