CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION
Last May I resigned my position as collector and preparator for the Geological Survey of Canada. And soon afterwards went into the field for the British Museum of Natural History, London. Though the British government was spending no money in this kind of research, Dr. A. Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology there, secured the means for the first two months’ work from The Sladin Memorial Fund of Piccadilly, London. My son, Levi, was the only expert collector I had with me though I employed men and transportation in the field. We settled down in a camp a couple of miles below Steveville and remained there all summer, exploring the badlands near the mouth of Berry Creek.
Our success was as usual, great. We were able to collect three skeletons of duck-billed dinosaurs of the genus Corythosaurus, of Brown or Stephanosaurus, of Lambe. They were all three discovered by my son, Levi, who worked with remarkable persistence and enthusiasm. I too, after I had recovered from an injury I received due to being thrown from my wagon onto the ground, put in every moment I could see, in the heavy work of excavating three skeletons, and taking them up before frost, when no man can work in those beds. It will not do to let plaster freeze, and without plaster we could not take up any vertebrate fossil there.
Owing to the fact that the clay in the strata prevent water entering it, very little true petrification has taken place. If you will refer to the Life of a Fossil Hunter, page 258, you will see there what I had learned up to the time of writing, the process by which fossils are made. I found here in the Belly River Series entirely different conditions. The bones had not been replaced by silica and become petrified. There was very little change in the bones except that they were usually sheathed in a hard layer of bog iron. The spongy bone was as friable as that in a dry, recent bone; the cells were not filled with rocky material. The thin outer layer of compact bone was filled with the iron simply. I once said that if I could get my teeth on a fossil bone I could tell its age almost, by the amount of silica it contained. Here, however, I find that nature has more than one way of preserving her records, and that it depends largely on the matrix in which the bones are entombed. If clay prevents water passing through the bones, there can be no true replacement, as water is the vehicle used in transporting silica or lime or whatever the petrifying material may be, and it cannot pass through certain clays. This discovery of mine after having observed the fossilized animals and plants of many horizons prove that the most careful observer is liable to misinterpret the workings of nature, showing us that God’s laws are past finding out by finite minds. Nature is a well that man can never fathom, an ocean with no shore. As long as men observe and think, they will be drawing water from well and ocean with no visible effect. The well will still be full and the shores remain unexplored.
Levi found the most complete skeleton of a crested duck-billed dinosaur that had been discovered in the Belly River Series by my party. Mr. Brown discovered, close to the Steveville Ferry, the most complete one known, and which he has fully described in his Corythosaurus casuarius, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, November 2nd, 1916. This is the first specimen ever found in a swimming pose. As if in the very act of swimming it had died and was instantly covered up in the soft mud and never disturbed until Brown’s pick revealed it to the world. I firmly believe as I have said before, this specimen proves conclusively that the conventional pose taken of these duck-bills as usually standing on land erect is a mistake; as I have always believed. The one I prepared for the Victoria Museum proves the same thing, and every one I have seen in the beds, or have found myself, point the same way, but as it will be a costly thing to take down all the mounts in American Museums of Cretaceous trachodonts I do not expect to live to see my views universally put in practice.
This specimen, No. 9, I wrote of to Dr. Woodward, August 21st, 1913: “I have uncovered enough of the floor to be able to give you some valuable information. I have now traced the entire column, except four feet of the caudal region. I have found one femur in position with its tibia and fibula, one humerus and front foot, and many ribs. The most disappointing thing: we have only found the mandibles and predentary, the maxilla of one side, the occiput and part of the crest and the back of the skull.”
Later we found the entire skeleton except four feet of the tail just back of the pelvic arch, where it had been weathered out and destroyed, and part of the skull. This skeleton was about thirty feet long, and I considered it next in perfection to that of Mr. Brown’s Corythosaurus. There were in addition large patches of the skin impression. I show you the place where the body lay, after we had wrapped it. It also shows the vast amount of labor required to save it.
It lay up a narrow gorge, too narrow to get a horse up it. We were obliged to cut steps up and down the rough way from the nearest point we could reach it from camp and Levi had to carry nearly all the water, plaster, and burlap, and paper, etc., necessary to wrap a skeleton nearly thirty feet long. The distance from the wagon was nearly an eighth of a mile.
But that labor sank into insignificance compared to the labor he had to strap beneath the specimen his burlap strips in such a way that the rock did not fall out. It would often take him many minutes before he could get the strip to stick. He lay on his back and patted the plaster soaked burlap with the ends of his fingers until the blood came. Then often the plaster would harden before he could get it to stick. Then he had to take a new strip and go through the same hard and patience-trying labor, filling his eyes with the burning lime. In all the labor we do in taking up a complete skeleton, there is no part of it that requires so much patience and so much skill as strapping the under side.
After this specimen was ready for hauling out of the brakes we had to build a sled road to it from the prairie and haul it to camp around the badlands, about six miles, while it only lay about a mile from camp in a bee-line.
Now it seems almost incredible that after over two months of such exhausting mental, physical and soul-trying labor, it should be sent to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean by a German Raider on English Commerce. If anything on earth can prove the wantonness of such destruction, this is a good example. I have given fifty years freely to science without money, often, and without price. The best that is in me. So I could show to generations to come the wonderful works of God in creation. Ten minutes of vandalism destroys all my labor, my hopes, my life almost, because I never can recover from such a blow as this. I have not told the full story yet, because the second specimen Levi found was in many respects better than this one I have described. It was in splendid matrix. A strong sandstone, and the bones beautifully preserved, a specimen that could have been easily prepared. One hind foot was all that was exposed. I could not believe that this meant anything, but a few loose bones. It pointed heavenward, from the side of a cliff. We followed the foot down to the body and found the entire skeleton except a few inches of the tail and THE HEAD. With a restored head, (and we found one that could have been used) as far as the public was concerned, the British Museum could have mounted these two lords of the ancient bayous in that great store house of treasures, more rare than gold or silver, to be the heritage of the ages still to come.
This too, was with the first one and went to the bottom, with the Mount Temple and as far as I could learn, all on board. Perhaps some time when the sea will give up her dead, these noble examples of God’s handiwork may also be exposed to the light of day once more. I considered from every standpoint, money or science, these two specimens were worth double what the first two months of labor yielded up. I never entered the Victoria Memorial Museum where we had mounted one of the noble duck-bills without a feeling of awe, as if I stood in the presence of God himself. It dominates everything in the Museum, and attracts the attention of the dullest of men. How happy I was in the thought that for countless thousands of years to come, others could feel that same feeling of reverence for the Creator. In the twinkling of an eye the blue Atlantic covered them. I once prepared the skeleton of a Megatherium from Brazil; it too had gone to the bottom of the ocean, but divers had rescued it from its watery grave. I have little hope that this will ever be done to the noble duck-bills who were sent to Davies Locker by a German torpedo.
We discovered other fine material that was saved and the preparators are at work on it, so I hope our last year’s labor, the most strenuous for many years may not be entirely lost.
My dear readers my book is coming to a close. The other volume “The Life of a Fossil Hunter” is out of print. It depends on you whether we have another edition published. This I will gladly do, if each reader of this one, will send me a subscription for the other. You will certainly realize that this work, like the other has been a labor of love. Take this volume, I am at my own personal expense issuing five hundred copies. If I sell each copy I will not realize any more than the cost of publication. I worked all last winter from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on the manuscript, and all day Saturday of each week, except Sunday. It has taken me all winter to look after the printing of this. My whole object has been to give the information I have acquired through years of toil and hardship in the desolate fossil fields to the public, so they may realize something of the wonders of Nature, and the hope it may lead some of my readers to Nature’s God, the Triune God we worship.