The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1896-10-15
ON A FOSSIL SEARCH.
The Remains of Giant Quadrupeds Re
Gently Discovered.

Il Prof. Henry Fairfield Osburn, cura
tor OF vertebrate paleontolOgy in the
american Museum of Natural History,
contributes a paper on prehistoric
|Quadrupeds of the Rockies" in which
he says:
Before describing the animals them
selves we may stop to note what our
present knowledge of them has cost in
human skill and endurance. Every one
OF these pictures is drawn from a COM
plete skeleton hewn out of the solid
rock, and each of these skeletons rep
resents years and years of arduous eX
ploration in which Workman, Hatcher,
Peterson and others sent out by the
American museum, by Princeton or by
Yale, have become famous. Our party
found the Titanothere in broilng
alkali canyon of South Dakota. Its
head was protruGIng from hard sand
stone cliff, and the chest, limbs and
trunk were chiseled out by the men un-
der a rude shelter which lowered the
noon temperature to JOG degrees.
They We're encouraged to think
that the whole beast had been
mired in a standing position.
This was probably the case orig
inally, but suddenly they came
across n fault; it appeared that the
hind limbs had been swept away; and
it required two years more searching
before bones of an animal of Il CORE
lsponding size were secured Every
Sfher skeleton has its own story of de
termination, disappointment and sur
| prise.
The old lake basins, once on sea level,
and enriched by ne moist, nalmy winds
of the Pacific, are now elevated from
1000 to 5000 feet. The only redeeming
feature of their present aspect of alb
solute barrennes& is that the absence
of vegetatio leaves the old graves and
burying grounds bare. Fossil bones
and skeletons are not plentiful-.far
! from it; but trained eve sees a great
distance along the bare gullies, cliff
and canyons, and your daily scramble
| of from - to 20 miles enables you to
prospect over vast stretch. You are
off in the morning, stifened by frosty
night. You knew by sad experience
that the ice in the basins does not prom.
Sc a cool day. Your backbone is still
freezing while the sun begins to broil
and blister your skin, and you are the
| living embodiments of the famous des'
sert served by the Japanese--a hot crust
without, an ice within. Your trail be
gins on the upland, which may be the
actual level of the old lake bottom; and,
as if walking through graveyard, you
never look for bones until the land
breaks away by erosion.
when you reach the edge of this up
land you look off into a sea of rock, wild
beyond description, and you plunge
down the slope to certain level. Then
you follow the level round and round
and in and out. Here you are on a seam
which bears fossils. Above and below
it are other familiar fossiiiferOus seams,
and between them are barren seams
where you will not find d bone if you
search till doomsday. This level, PEI
| hapS, represents the delta of a great
mountain river which swept the ami
mails out with coarse sand, pebbles and
| debris Sometimes you walk miles and
miles, up and down, day after day, and
see nothing but common turtle bones,
which are so deceptive and tempting at
distance that the fossil hunter pro
fanely kicks them aside. Turtles are
| found everywhere, because they swan
out, basled in the sunshine in the mid
lakes and occasionally sank to the bot
tom, while the carcasses Of land animals
were buried in the dcltas or nearer
shore.
In such Il fossil-barren land the heat
seems twice as torrid as on the butteS,
your muscles and back ache doubly,
your tongues lies pas'ched from the last
gulp of alllali water, your soul abhors a
fossil and longs for the green shade of
the east and the watermelon, when, all
of sudden, a little projecting bone
strikes your wearied eye. You fall on
your knees and breathe gently on the
loose sand; a little scraping, and you
see signs of skull-perhapS of some
missing link. The thrill Of discovery
spreads like an elixir through your
frame, and two or three hours later.
after carefully cutting out the prize
you walk vigorously back to camp,eVery
inch a man.
Thus fossil hunting is life of vicissi-
tudes and emotions. The fossil hunter
is predestined to his work, like the
sportsman. He returns east in tn"
autumn, vowing he will never go back
to the Bad Lands; but as the favorable
months of spring come FOUND he be-
comes more and more restless, until he
is off. The country that is as hot az
hades. watered by stagnant alkali pools.
is almost invariably the richest in fos.
sils. Here. in fact as you find the great
est variety and number of bones, you
enjoy the most delightful flights of the
scientific imagination; when parched
and burned, You conjure before you the
glories of these ancient kes."-Cen.
fury.
No Need of Them.