The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1921-08-09
BIG GAME HUNT OF
TRAINED BIOLOGISTS
USING PICK AND SHOVEL IN
STEAD OF RIFLE ON AGATE
SPRINGS RANCH.

AGATE, Neb.-The annual big
game hunt of trained biologists and
psychologists of the world is under
way at the Agate Springs Ranch near
here. Instead OF using high-powered
rifles to bag their game, these expert
| hunters of rhinoceros, mastodons
camel and deer use a pick and shovel
The animals sought are not live ones
but are the bones Of prehistoric earth
travellers of ambition or SO years ago
The Agate Springs Ranch, owned
| by Capt. James H. Cook, extends
along the Niobrara river for ten miles
in Sioux county and is about twenty
! five miles southeast of Harrison. On
| it is located what is said to be the
greatest prehistoric bone quarry in
the world.
Since its discovery so years ago per
sons interested in the study OF fossil
remains have been making explora-
tions. During the coming season, the
quarries will be worked by the United
States National Museum, Smithsonian
Institution, under the direction OF J.
w. Gidley, and Others The American
Museum of New York will have the
usual party here taking what they de-
sire but continuing the search for
Dinonhyus-an ancestral hog about
the size Of the OK in heigh and weight.
A fine skeleton of the Dinonhyus was
secured in 1904 by the Moril Geologi-
cal expedition. 1t stood nearly eleven
feet in height.
In prehistoric times, the place now
called Agate Springs Ranch is believ-
ed by some to have been water hole,
similar to the modern African water
holes where at times great herds of
animals gathered to drink. Other
scientists believe the place to have
been once a lake and that carcasses
drifted to this spot and their bones
dropped. Capt Harold |. Cook, son of
the owner of the ranch and consulting
engineer. says it seems more proba-
Bile that bone bed is the result of
great eddy in cove along the shore
line of an immense river. The carcass
es of various herds and individuals
are believed to have been picked up
by the moving water and lodged in
the cover This, he believes would &C
count for the partial segregation of
types as we'll as the miscellaneous
mixture of animals found in the quar-
ries.
The Titanotherium, or giant beast,
is the largest animals bones to be
found in this region. 1t is about the
size of an elephant The most COM
mon fossil mammal in the bad lands
of Nebraska is the Oredon-an her
biviorous animal about the size of the
domestic sheep. As many as eight or
ten skulls of the Oredon have been
found frequently in a space no larger
than the floor Of an ordinary room.
1t has been discovered here by
scientists that America is the home OF
the rhinoceros, the camel, as well as
that of the horse and many other ami
mails now to be found only in foreign
countries or not at all. Mr.. Cook says
that Nebraska is the home of the rhi
noceroses and their wanderings led
them into other parts of the world. At
Agate their bones and skulls occur in
heaps. He says they became extinct in
Nebraska at the close OF plicocene-
half a million years ago.
The fossils collected from the bone
beds at Agate Springs Ranch are en-
tirely mammalian. Only a few of
these, however, attract general atten-
ton, such as titanotheres, oredon, rhi-
noceroses, horses, hogs, bovine, mas
todons, mammoths, camels, deer and
the like.