VOL. V. 
KANSAS CITY, MO., FEBKURY, 1891. 
NO. 2 
For THE K. C. Scientist . 
Recently Discovered Foot-Prints of the 
Amphibian Age, in the Upper Coal 
Measure Uroup of Kansas 
City, Missouri. 
By Edward Butts. 
In grading one of the Jackson County 
roads recently, through the bluft' imme- 
diately south of Brush Creek on a south- 
ern prolongation of the line of Main 
Street, in Kansas City, Missouri!, a 
vertical cut was made about thirty feet 
in depth. Most of this excavation was in 
blue shale which ordinarily disintegrates 
unstratifled. On account of a large 
percentage of sand in this locality, a 
portion of the shale after exposure 
splits in layers in many cases not to ex- 
ceed one thirty-second part of an inch in 
thickness. 
This ?and-mingled strata, marks the 
line of an ancient sea coast and is most 
abundant elevated ten feet below the top 
of layer number ninety-one of Mr. Broad- 
head's geological survey of the state, 
which layer here has a total thickness of 
twenty-five feet and dips to the north- 
west about one half of one percent. 
Upon this coast line, there still remain 
imprinted on the rock, animal traces of 
such as inhabited the earth near the 
closing epoch of the carboniferous age. 
With these prints are associated 
Orthoceras crihrosum^ Nuculana hellis- 
triata, Pleurotomaria inornata^ Myalino 
sicallovi and other shells characteristic 
of the Upper Coal Measure group, also 
fucoids, lignite, suncracks, ripple marks 
and hail prints.* 
It appears that we have before us an 
engraved chapter of the preadamitn 
world which is much easier to translate 
than many of the inventions of human 
intelligence that have been made to per- 
petuate existence historically. 
Here, elevated one hundred and flfty- 
four feet above the mean water of the 
Missouri River, there existed a sea. Its 
shores stretched with a long gradual rise 
to the southeast. As the moon passed 
above, the tide came in, bringing shells 
and sediment which formed, one by one, 
the thin layers upon the marshy beach. 
The recession of the tide left on the 
shore the ripple marks whose depth and 
distance are in proportion to the velocity 
©f the wind which formed them. Then 
the reptiles came running too and fro 
along the shore, feasting upon the shell- 
* These prints are generally called rain 
prints, but it is not believed that the force 
of a falling rain drop would be sufficient to 
impre&s several layers of the shale, as is the 
case here. 
