The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-07-05
MINING FOR BONES.
Gigantic Skeleton Menagerie of
Fossil Animals.
IT WOULD MAKE sARNum STARE.
yGsstodons snd Snakes ~ Big ~ Rail-
rosd Trafns-Prehistoric Graves
Robbed by Government.

wAsHrsGros CIrY, June 29.-lspeciai
CORRESPONDENTS. -Four weeks from now
win be started for Washington City the
most extraordinary procession Of animals
ever seen on the face of the earth, upon
which the ghosts of Barnum and Fore
paugh might gaze with as wide-eyed aston
ishuent as ever the spectacle of their own
united shows excited in the innocent
minds of rural adolescence. In this
wonderful parade will be gigantic reptiles
as big as good sized houses, some OF them
100 feet IN length, flying dragons with q
25-foot spread of wings, huge birds with
teeth, mammals two or three times as
great In size as elephants, sharks as large
as the hugest whales, other fishes clad in
mighty plates OF armor, and countless
specimens more of equal strangeness and
enormous dimensions, such as actually m
habited the world before men arrived in
IL. For nine years past the government
has been digging up and putting together
the skeletons Of these strange creatures,
and now the vast collection, at present
stored in New Haven, Conn.,, is being got
ready for Shipment by rail to the National
Museum. The whole OF It would occupy
fully one-half of that institutions building
here, and 80 only portion is TO be inn
mediately forwarded, the rest to follow as
soon as quarters have been established by
congress for its accommodation.
The business of digging for these tre-
mendous fossils is carried on pretty much
like any other mining. In various parts
of the West there are great deposits of
them, into which the scientific enthusiasts
eagerly delye for relics Of epochs thousands
of centuries OLD. One of their chosen
hunting grounds is the region between the
Rockies and the Wasatch mountains.
Ages ago the upheavai of these hills by
geologic action cut off the portion of what
had been sea between these ranges from
the ocean, and the water thus shut away
formed many big lakes. A typical one Of
this sort existed in Wyoming and around
IL the mighty antediluyian mammals
gathered in herds to crop the suceulent
and luxuriant vegetation of what was
then tropical climate in that re-
gion. They died natural deaths,
or became mired in the mud when they
went to drink, and the sediment slowly
deposited in the water covered up their
bones and preserved them from decay.
This sediment reached mile in thickness,
DQlutHk DttWEcu AtS layEIS tlAGSC uhCtEiit
skeletons distributed like currants through
cake. At length the water draining off,
left the land dry, and in the case of the
Wyoming lake referred to, subsequent
foods washed away much of the sediment
previously deposited, leaving what are
now called "Bad Lapds"-picturesqu
with cliffs, peaks and columns carved out
In fantastic shapes and of variegated COL
oring.
Through such a region as this the scien-
tific explorer travels with his eyes as wide
open for fossils as the gold hunter keeps
his for the shining metal. If from the
face Of some rocky cliff he chances to see
bone project. exposed by the water that
has cut away the hillside, he sets a party
of men to quarrying with drill. blast and
pickaxe, until whatever is there in the
way of remains has been taken out Pos
sibly some great deposit of prehistoric
monsters may be struck in this way,
in which case the find is kept
as secret as possible, being re-
garded by the discoverer as his
private mine. If he gave IL away rival
palmontologists would rush to the spot
and dig out all the animals for their own
study and glory. Professor o. c. Marsh,
who directed the gathering of the govern
ment collection referred to- has such mines
of his own all over the West, from which
he can draw to order the most astonish-
ing, variety of. gigantic creatures. He
made the remark the other day that there
was one small valley he knew of where
relics of the ancient mosasaurus were so
plentiful that, passing through il recently.
he noticed the skeletons of six of those
mighty swimming lizards, each eighty
feet in length, in sight at one time.
Usually these amazing fossils are found
imbedded in solid rock. After they have
been roughly quarried out, the sandstone
or other matrix enclosing them is care
fully chiseied away from the bones The
latter are given a coat of glue TO keen out
the decomposing air, and any that are
broken or splintered are bound up with
Irvine, after which they are packed for
shipment. When one of these beasts of
antiquity died, ITS carcass being covered
up with sediment that afterward became
stone, the skeleton was apt to be preserved
entire and with its parts in position, all
ready for mounting in museum.
There was new reptile found
in Wyoming the other day in such a
complete state, which has been named the
"brontosaurus." Ii was sixty feet long.
stood fifteen feet high when alive and
weighed twenty tons. Cast in the rock
from which it was taken was perfect
mould Of one of its eyeballS. with which il
looked upon the world 5000, 900 of wears
ago. 1t had O very small head, a long and
flexible neck, short body and huge
tail. In the same neighhorhood has
also been discovered recently an.
other reptilian monster called tho
"triceratops,n which had an enormou:
bony frill around the back of its neck
This surprising development, measuring
ak feet across, was intended for the attach
ment of great muscles that were necessary
for holding up the large head The
animal, though tremendously massive
was only thirty feet long, but il was Gov
cred with plates of armor and had a sharr
and horny beak, not to mention horn or
It's nose and another on its forehead, the
latter two and half feet in length.
In Colorado have been found great de-
posts of the bones of 'titanosaurs. the big
gest land animals that ever existed. They
grew to be sixty-fiye feet long and stood
forty feet high when erect upon their hinG
legs. Instead of browsing, as did the bron
fosaur ana triceratops upon the iuxurian
aquatic vegetation around the lake borders
they fed upon the foliage of trees on TIA,
mountain sides. Likewise did the ''iguan
odon, several times "a heavy as an Gle
plant, which had nipping beak like
turtles and also walked erect. using it.
huge tail Tor support and towering TO 1
height of forty or fifty feet.
In the Mesozoic epoch, or 'sage of rem
tiles" when the creatures described lived
these and other similar herbivoroas ami
mails were the biggest of the beasts On,
OF them, the "atlantosaur, was 100 fee
long. its thigh bones, many Of which have
been found. measuring eight feet in length
and twenty-five inches through. They
had various methods of pursuing exis
tsnce. Some went on all fours and haC
backbones that were mere shells nlled with
warm air from their lungs, which SeryeC
them as floats while they walked in III,