, 1898-11-14
EARLIEST SETTLERS
SOME HUGE OLD-TIME INHART-
TANTS OF WYOMING
DESCRIBED.
Beasts Which Weighed Sixty Tons, Had
Necks Thirty Feet and Tails Sixty
Feet in Length-Sma!!ust Bone
Yet Found is More Than a Man Can
Lift.

Grant Jones writes as follows to the
Denver Post:
Wyoming is writing a strange chap
ter in the worlds geological history.
The big sage-brush commonwealth is
scoring a record breaker in fossil for
nations by unearthing the petrifed
bones Of the most colossal animal ever
taken from the earth's stratas. This
stone monster IA a dweller in the
Jurassic age-a dinosaur. measuring
nearly 100 feet in length, and being
perhaps thirty feet in height at the
hips and twenty-five feet at the Shout
ders, an animal so terrible in size that
its petrifed skeleton alone is believed
to weigh more than 4 0 1000 pounds.
Assistant Prof. w. H. Reed of the de-
partment of geology of Wyoming state
university, is it's discoverer. He made
the great find while prospecting for
fossils ninety miles northwest of Lara
mic, last August, and since that time
the geological department of the uni
versity has been secretly at work in
its restoration. So vast is the skeleton
of the animal that its smallest bone yet
found is more than a nan can lift, and
with two men in the fed constantly at
work it is believed that many months
may be required before the monster can
be placed on the campus here at Lara
ME. Although it's restoration is as yet
incomplete, still enough of its bones
have been disinterred to establish its
genera and to place it at once in geo.
logical history as the king OF all ami
mails restored from fossil fields.
In comparison to a mammoth, this
animal was in size as a horse is to a
dog. In the known fossil world there
is but Il creature that can serve In an
approximate comparison with it, and
this would be only as a child beside it.
Prof. o. C. Marsh's famous brontosaur
at the Yale museum at New Haven Is
ment. This was a creature of its own
kind and time-a fellow creature in
Wyoming, where for millions OF years
they have slept together in the same
graveyard to be finally resurrected by
the same ghoul of science-Prof. Reed.
The skeleton at Yale was restored in
1879 by Prof. Reed under the direction
Of Prof. Marsh. In its restoration
ssven-tenths of the skeleton was found
in place. Besides this monster. the
largest dinosaurs Of Europe and, in
deed, the world have remained since
It's discovery as only pigmies, and geo.
logical students for years have made
pilgramages to New Haven to study
and to marvel at it's immense skeleton.
This monster is believed to have
been about seventy feet in length, ana
in life to have weighed perhaps 80, 900
pounds, the new discovery in Wyo-
ming eclipsing it in this respect by
probably more than 10000 pounds.
This animal was perhaps twenty-five
feet at the hips and sixteen feet at the
shoulders. Its femur alone is slightly
more than six feet in length, while the
femur OF the animal now being resur-
reoted is nearly or quite eight feet in
length. A measurement of its lumbar
vertebrae across the centrum is thir-
teen inches. while a corresponding YER
tebrae of the fossil recently discovered
is owe sixteen inches in similar meas
urement. From the bones disinterred
the dinosaur in Wyoming, in COMPARE
son to the one at Yale is in size about
as three to two.
In the summe Of 1894 the University
OF Wyoming began work in the field
to secure a complete collection Of fos-
sill remains Of these great animals.
During the past three years Prof. Reed
has spent his entire summers in this
work Of collection, with a result that
he has brought to the western UNIVERSE
ty more than fifty mi Of bones of these
huge reptiles.
His recent great discovery is believed
to make the university's collection Of
reptilian fossils the greatest in the
world. The Wyoming fossil beds, as
far as known, are confined to Albany
and Carbon counties in the south CEN
trail part OF the state. The bones are
usually found in banks Of clay or mari,
but occasionally in beds of sandstone.
It is not an unusual thing to md a bone
bed four or five feet IN thickness, with
the bones so close together and 20 mix
ed up that it is almost impossible to
take them out and restore them to a
place in the body.
At one time in the history Of Wyo-
ming, biologists say that the state had
fresh water lakes and a eli
mate that was semi-tropical. At this
time these animals are believed to
have inhabited these lakes and swamps
in myMads. The animals sank into the
mud In dying, and their bones were
covered with other deposits and became
petrffed. The largest beds are found
where, at one time, are supposed to
have been the mouths Of great rivers,
the animals after death having hoated
down these rivers, where they were