Evening star., 1940-01-06
Of Sturs, Men
And Atoms
Notebook Of Science Progress
In Field, Laboratory
And Study
By Thomas r. Henry.

By Thomas r. Henry.
Another lost page of the rock manu-
script of time, with a fragmentary,
cryptic record of one or two million
years of the history of warm -blooded
animals, has been discovered in Central
Utah by DR.. c. Lewis Gain, paleontolo-
gist of the Smithsonian Institution.
It contains scattered teeth and bones
of primitive mammals who hourished in
North America about 100000 years
ago-Weird creatures that became ex-
tinct long before the appearance of the
direct ancestors of the mammalian
fauna of today Only the crudest sort
of picture of what they looked like can
be reconstructed from their scanty re-
mains.
1t is a page torn out of that obscure
chapter in earths history known to
biologists as the paleocene era-the
period which directly preceded the
dawn age when the ancestors of most
mammals singing birds and Towering
plants now eXtant made their first ap-
pearance.
This paleocene, dating from 100000
to 90,000,000 years ago, came Immediately
after the so-called Cretaceous geologi-
cal era which marked the end of the
great reptiles. In only few parts of
the earth are there paleocene remains.
Five of these fossil localities are in
North America.
Two, the Puercos and the Torrijon,
are in New Mexico. They are separated
by an interval of close to 100000
years, during which mammalian life was
making very slow progress from its
crude beginnings to something resem-
bling the forms known today. Almost
contemporary with the Torrejon, but
with a great variety of forms, are the
Crazy Mountain beds in North Dakota,
extensively explored by the Smithsonian
Institution in the past.
Three years ago DR.. Charles L. Gill
more, Smithsonian paleontologist, dis
covered in Central Utah a deposit Of
rock-encased mammal bones showing
forms intermediate between the Puercos
and Fort Union types. This has been
extensively excavated by DR.. Gain, and
a considerable variety Of hitherto un-
known forms has been described. The
animals have been named the dragon
fauna"
Last summer DR.. Gain found an ex-
tension of this dragon fauna in the
mountains two miles to the westward
of the original site. Beneath the new
beds were l65 feet of rock showing no
remains of living things. Below this in
terval of blank rock was the new page,
rocks with fairly abundant mammalian
teeth and bones.
From the development Indicated the
living creatures were slightly more de-
veloped than the Puercos forms. and
less developed than the Fort Union
fauna. That they were earlier than the
dragon fauna was evident from the
thickness Of the rock which separated
them from the higher deposit-rock de-
posted by the slow processes OF nature
through many milleniums
The actual bones and teeth themselves
are very similar to those of the dragon
strata, although an expert senses that
they are slightly more primitive. Evo-
luton moved slowly in those days. A
million years-approximately the span
Of life on earth of human beings-made
very little change. Some forms, how
ever, are more abundant in the lower
than the upper strata indicating that
they had reached their heydey before
the dragon era.
Many of the forms in both strata, rep
resented chiefly by scattered teeth of
peculiar form, were of the race known
as ulti-tuberculates. They were. for
the most part small, primitive creatures.
None of them much exceeded the size
of rabbit. Their teeth curiously enough,
were almost identical in form with those
of the mammoths which fourished about
100000 years later.
In the earliest days of mammals, these
multi i-tuberculateS were so abundant
that they might almost be considered
the dominant creatures. Nobody knows
of them. They disappeared completely
from the face of the earth, leaving no
animal form remotely resembling them.
They are not in the ancestral line of
anything that has been known on earth
for 100000 years or more.
At both the levels investigated by Dr.
Gain, however, there were fesh-eating
animals and small creatures showing
resemblances, in some respects, to the
hoofed animals of today. They cannot
be considered direct ancestors DR.. Gain
points out, but it is possible that they
were fairly close relatives of the actual
ancestors who developed in some other
part of the world and whose remains
have not yet been discovered
There still are many missing pages
in the record between the beginning of
the pre-dawn age and the beginning
of the dawn age.
During the period when the 165 feet
of rock were being laid down between
the two Utah deposits, for example-a