The Mena weekly star., 1896-09-16
HUNTING GIANT FOSSILs
REMAINS OF PREHISTORIC QUADRU-
 FEDS FROM THE ROCKIES.
The Bones of Monsters That Existe d Countless Ages Ago Recovered After Long and Tiresome
 Seareh--Exciting Guest.

Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, cura- tor of vertebrate paleontology in the Amer ican Museum of Natural History, con tributes a paper on Prehistoric Quadru- peds of the Rockies" to the September Gen. tury The article is illustrated by drawings by Charles Knight, giving, careful recon structions of these strange beasts. Profes- sor Osborn says: Before describing the animals themselves, we may stop to note what our present knowledge of them has cost Tn 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 represents years and years of ardUous exploration in which Wortman, Hatcher, Peterson and others sent out by the American museum, by Princeton, or by Yale, have become fa- nous. Our party found the Titanolhere in a broiling alkali canon of South Dakota. Its head was protruding from a hard sand stone cliff, and the chest limbs aid trunk were chiseled out by the men under rude shelter which lowered the noon tempera- ture to l06 degrees. They were encouraged to think that the whole beast had been mlred in standing position: This was probably the case originally, but suddenly they came across fault; 1t appeared that the hind legs had been swept away; and it required two years more searching before bones Of an animal of corresponding size were secured. Every other skeleton has it's own story of determination, disappoint- ment, and surprise.
 The old lake basins, once on sea level, and enriched by the moist, balmy winds of the Pacific, are now elevated from 4O00
 
 of their present aspect of absolute barren ness is that the absence of vegetation bare. Fossil bones and skeletons are not plentiful-far from it; but a trained eye sees a great distance along the bare gull lies, cliffs and canons, and your daily scramble of from fifteen to twenty miles enables you to prospect over vast stretch. You are off in the morning. stiff experience that the ice of the basins does not promise a cool day. Your backbone is still freezing while the sun begins to broil and blister your skin, and you are the liv- ing embodiment of the famous dessert served by the Japanese-a hot crust with out, an ice within. Your trail begins on the upland. which may be the actual level of the old lake bottom and as if walking through 8 graveyard, you never look for bones until the land breaks away by ero- sion.
 When you reach the edge of this upland, you look off into a sea of rock, sometimes Wild beyond description. and you plunge down the slope to a certain level. Then you follow this level round and round and Tn and out. Here you are On seam which bears fossils. Above and below it are oth- CT similar fossilferous seams and between them are barren seams where you will not ind a bone if you search till doomsday. This level perhaps, represents the delta or great mountain river which swept the animals 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 a distance that the fossil hunter profanely kicks them aside. Turtles are found every where because they swan out. basked in the sunshine in the mid-lakes and occa- siorally sank to the bottom. while the es casses of land animals were buried in deltas or nearer shore.
 In such a fossil barren land the heat seems twice as torrid, on the buttes your muscles and back ache doubly, your tongue les Darched from the last gulp of alkall water, your soul abhors a fossil and longs tor the green shade of the East and the v watermelon, when. all of a sudden. a lit- tle projecting bone strikes your wearied eye, You fall on your knees, and breathe gently on the loose sand: a little scraninr and you see the signs of skulI-perhaps % saxsaa some missing iSak RsutsiIssdwstes hat Is as hot Tfaties. ~rafered by stag lant alka1i pools. Is almost invariably the | ichest in fossils. Here. Tn Tact as you l