4 AMERICAN PERMIAN VERTEBRATES 



Many of the most important and interesting specimens obtained 

 by us on these expeditions come from two isolated deposits which 

 I call the Cacops and Craddock bone-beds, concerning wliidh and 

 the forms found in them the following will be of use. 



Cacops Bone-Bed 



Seldom in the history of paleontological exploitation has there 

 been found a more remarkable deposit of early land vertebrates 

 than that to which I give the name of the Cacops bone-bed, because 

 of the genus the remains of which occur most abundantly in it. 

 The immediate locaUty of this deposit is about five miles west of the 

 Vernon road in the valley of the Wichita, not far from Indian Creek. 

 The deposit was discovered by Mr. Miller in the autumn of 1909, 

 from a large quantity of washed-out bones lying in a small gully 

 near the foot of some rather precipitous exposures. Only a por- 

 tion of the remains were exhumed at the time of the discovery; 

 the bed was thoroughly worked out by Mr. Miller the following 

 year. 



The numerous skeletons contained in the deposit lay upon each 

 other through a thickness of about two feet or "a little more; those 

 near the top were more isolated, those lower down packed more 

 closely together and more disturbed in their relations. As a rule 

 the various skeletons are more or less united, but frequently legs, 

 tails, and even single bones are found isolated. The material in 

 which the remains occur is the dark red clay forming the greater 

 part of the exposures of the Texas Permian deposits, but the bones 

 themselves are incrusted with a thin, more or less adherent, hard 

 matrix, sometimes removable with difficulty. The bones of the upper 

 layers have a less thick incrustation, but in the lower ones the 

 skeletons lie more closely packed together, the skeletons or parts 

 of skeletons often being cemented together in masses of considerable 

 size. Because of this it is often difficult to separate any one skele- 

 ton without disturbing the others. The remains lay in a space some 

 six or seven feet in width by ten or twelve in length. As a rule the 

 skeletons lie prone, but some have been found in a supine position. 

 To develop all the skeletons or parts of skeletons in the deposit 

 would require the uninterrupted time of a skilful preparator for 



