484 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



abled them to expand the cavity of the mouth and swallow large morsels, through 

 a pelican-like throat. 



The most interesting fossils found in the rich beds of western Kansas are 

 Marsh's toothed birds. His Hesperornis regalis reached a height of nearly six feet. 

 The wings were not developed. They were swimmers and lived on fishes. They 

 were provided with a row in each jaw of sharp, reptile-like teeth, and thus nearly 

 approach them. Many suppose that they were derived from reptiles; another 

 proof is in the oldest of all birds, that had a long vertebrate tail; and the most 

 important discovery in this line was made by Prof. Marsh this year in the Rocky 

 Mountains, having found a small Dinosaur that walked. The metatarsals and 

 carpals were united, as in all modern birds. 



Great flying dragons, or Pterodactyls^ were common, with stretch of wings of 

 twenty-five feet. They were toothless and Marsh has made the new genus Pter- 

 anodont for them. Another very unique species was Cope's Protostega gigas. It 

 measured twenty feet from one flipper to the other, and instead of the ribs being 

 expanded and united, as in modern turtles to form a shell, they were separate. 

 Instead of a shell, they were provided with great dermal plates, an inch thick in 

 the centre, two feet in diameter and beveled off to a thin figured margin. One 

 specimen found by my party in 1877 weighed 300 pounds after the matrix was 

 removed. It was eighteen inches from one condyle of the lower jaw to the other. 

 Great oyster-like shells, twenty-seven inches in diameter, were found. But we 

 must leave this interesting group to go on to Cenozoic time, the age of mammals, 

 which is divided into three periods — Eocene, or early dawn ; Miocene, or middle 

 dawn, and Pliocene, or recent dawn of the existing state of things. Great mam- 

 mals roamed through the dense forests of the Rocky Mountain region, which was 

 a level swampy country. The temperature was tropical, and plant-life luxuriant. 

 Here we find ample material for the study of the ancestors of modern animals. 

 The horse had many ancestors, and their remains have been eagerly sought for. 

 In early Eocene time he appeared no larger than a fox, with five toes on the 

 hind feet. The folds of the tooth enamel were simple ; later on he had discarded 

 his two side toes and walked on three, later still only one toe on each foot was in 

 functional use. The side toes were like the dew claws of a dog. The enamel 

 was complicated and resembled that of the recent horse, that has only the rudi- 

 ments of these side toes in the splint bones, and so the ancestors of other animals 

 have been traced. The camel has two toes, and the two metatarsals and carpals 

 are united, a medullary canal extending the whole length of the bone on each 

 side. I was so fortunate as to find a camel in the miocene of Oregon that had 

 the two metatarsals and carpals entirely distinct. In the Loup Fork Pliocene I 

 have been employed the present season, for the U. S. Geological Survey, and 

 have been remarkably successful. 



My party having procured 15,000 pounds of fossil vertebrates. They con- 

 sist chiefly of three species of rhinoceros, the mastodon, camel, horse, a small 

 deer, lion, etc., all from one locality. Great numbers of bones have been washed 

 from some river into a deep hole, in the lake, and everything in connection with 



