The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1916-11-02
SPECIMENS DINOSAUR FAMILY.
American Museum Has Cnrivalled
Collections of Ancient Monsters.


scum has sent out a collecting party
annually, in charge of Barnum
Brown, to obtain fossil remains OF
dinosaurs from the cretaceous forma-
tions of the West. The party has re-
mained in the field as long as the
weather permitted such work to be
carried on proftably, usually four or
FIVE months each year. Really line
specimens are exceedingly rare, and
getting them out of the rock and
packing and shipping them are slow
and difficult operations-but each
year the collection has included one
or more skeletons and skulls of these
gigantic extinct reptiles, and the mu-
scum now possesses an unrlvalled
series, representing the numerous
kinds which inhabited this country
some millions of years ago, during
the cretaceous or chalk period.
1t was a very different looking
world at that time. A great interior
sea stretched over what is now the
Western Plains, from the Gulf OF
Mexico to the Arctic ocean. Along
its western border were extensive
forest lowlands and marshes where
great rivers brought down mud and
sand from the mountains to the west
ward and buried the skeletons OF the
dinosaurs, then native to that region,
writes G. w. P, in the New YORK
Evening Post. J
In the Old World a great ocean
stretched across most of western Eu-
rope and far east and south across
much of southern Asia and north Al
RIGA. The present Mediterranean is
but a shrunken remnant OF tnat
ocean. The great mountain ranges
of modern times had not yet risen.
There we're no Rocky Mountains, no
Alps, no Himalayas.
Such mountain ranges as had exist
ed in the more ancient periods oy
erosion to broad, low ridges. The
great chalk formation OF western Eu-
rome. from which the cretaceous pc
riod receives it's name, was then pe-
ing formed as soft calcareous ooze
at the bottom of clear and mooer-
atelv deep ocean, swarming with ma
lrine life.
Not to Be Traded Back.
None of the familiar birds and
mammals had yet appeared on the
earth: not even the ancestors of any
one of them can be certainly traced
back into this far-distant period.
Altogether to these scarce and tiny
mammals, from whom were to rise
the higher animals, of later ages oe-
longed the promise of the future, the
mower of the present in the creta-
ceous period lay with the reptiles.
They were dominant on land, in the
ocean and in the air; and in. c.each
field they rivalled in size and sur
passed in pecuiarities of form ana
habits anything that had lived before
or has since come into existence.
OF the great marine reptiles OF the
time. the museum has as yet an IN
adequate exhibit. Space is lacking
to display some of our finest spec1-
mems. OF the giant flying reptile
Pteranodon, there is now being pre-
pared a skeleton to be placed in the
corridor.
The museums exhibits OF cretace-
ous dinosaurs, the great land AMI
mails of the time, are already large
and varied and will be much increas-
ed in the course of few years as the
skeletons are prepared and mounted.
There were many different kinds
as diverse in appearance as the vari-
Gus modern quadrupeds.
The Terrible Saurian.
Preeminent among them was the
giant Tyrannosaurus, the terrible 'ty-
rant saurian,' as Prof. Osborn ap-
propriately named him. His skele-
ton stands in the middle of the cen
trail hall on the fourth floor, no suit
able place being at present available
in the Dinosaur hall. Forty-seVen
feet in length and standing eighteen
feet above the floor, he was fierce
carnivorous beast, as attested by the
huge Jaws with sharp-pointed teeth
and the powerful claws, curved like
those of an eagle. He was fitted to
overcome and prey upon the largest
and most powerful of the herbivorous
dinosaurs, his contemporaries.
In striking contrast to the massive
and gigantic Tyrannosaurus is the
long-limbed and slenderly proper
toned Ornithomimus, the Ostrich
dinosaur, as he has been named by
Professor Osborn. The long neck