The Emporia weekly news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1881-1889, 1884-04-17
The Connectfcut FOot Prfato.

The COnMeetfcut FOot Prt010s
There is probably no other part of TIE
world which has recorded in its rocks SO
wonderful story of the past as that Of
the red sandstone of the Connecticut
River Valley. The entire valley is under.
laid with dark red sandstone, lying in
stratiied beds and extending from the
highlands bordering it on the east to
those on the west-a space varying il
width from twenty miles ON the Conneeti.
-oas line to six or eight miles near the
middle of Massachusetts,, and gradually
narrowing to about one mile on the Yer
mont border. This vast bed, which ex-
tends about one hundred miles, to Long
Island Sound, occupies what was once the
bottom of a great estuary or tarm OF the
sea, which extended inland in the
Mesozoic era and perhaps earlier. The
estury, into which the tides flowed, was
the home of immense numbers of ami
mails of many different kinds, mostly of
species now extinct. When the tide
was out aud the muddy bottom was
left bare along its shores, great troops of
quadrupeds and bipeds frequented the
fats, where they probably found vegeta-
bic food suitable to their wants, or per-
haps Toasted OF each other in the soul
narrowing manner depicted in some of
our early schoolbooks. Among them were
great ornithic reptiles representing a
higher type of reptilian organization than
any now existing-a sort of connecting
link between the bird and the reptile
which stood ten or twelve feet high and
weighed from six hundred to eight hun
dred pounds, whose feet measured eigh-
teen inches long, and whose stride was
from thirty to sixty inches; spterous,
not unlike the giant dinOTnis or moa of
New Zealand. A dozen smaller species,
some no larger than turkey, fed in flookA
along the shore, mingled with batrachians
as large as an elephant, and gigantic
crocodiles and lizards-or animals ap-
preaching them in form. The labyrinthO-
don of Europe, 6 frog SIS large as
an OK, was 3 pygmy compared with
the great otozoum of New England,
whose hind feet measured twenty inches
long by thirteen to fifteen wide, and
whose fore feet-Bot more than q third
as large-were probably used only when
the head was brought to the ground.
Beside these sported host of smAlleI
bipeda and quadrupeds, three. toed, four
toed, and five-toed; some with bird-likG
feet and some with webbed feet, some
long-legged and some short legged, some
gramiDivorous, some carnivorous, forming
such a procession as mortal man neVeI
looked upon.
Wherever they stepped along the mud
bottoms. left bare by the receding tide
the plastic sand or clay took and retained
the exact impression of their feet; the
mud dried rapidly under the tropical SUE
L. - -, n j, ira Oh
were filled with fine sand, which mad.
permanent the impression. The ebbint
of the waters left another coating of sof
mud, which was in turn tracked by thu
animals and covered in the same way
and SO it went or, year after year, and ag'
after age, one layer being deposited upoE
another until the strata had accumulated
| 10 q great thickness. This is the condition
in which they exist today, and geologist
compute that the strata must be from
| 5000 to Is, 900 feet thick.