Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1894 — IN PRE-GLACIAL DAYS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

IN PRE-GLACIAL DAYS

REMAINS OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF WYOMING. Evidence* of Singular Creature* of the Eocene and Miocene Periods Found In the Bad Lands—Success of Agents of the Museum ot Natural History. Found In a New State. The immense county of Uintah, extending from the north end of what constitutes Yellowstone Park, marks the western boundary of the State of Wyoming and makes the southwestern corner of that recently admitted State. This corner has some of that peculiar western formation known as bad lands, and this spot covers an area of about 5,000 square miles and is particularly rich in fossils of preglacial animals. These bad lands, according to official geology, were once lakes back in what are known as the eocene and miocene periods of tertiary time, which means the first two of the three principal divisions during which were laid down the groups of rocks. It Is averred by these scientists that the rivers discharging into these lakes so wrought on the surrounding soil that the lake basins became filled with alluvial material, and in these old beds and in the cliffs surrounding

them are found the fossil skeletons of the peculiar fauna that illustrated life in those early days. It may be added that while the estimated time since these periods varies, it is evident that the first mentioned was not less than 100,000 years ago and the second at least half as much. Into this region a party of fossil hunters penetrated a year ago to collect specimens for the Museum of Natural History of New York and camped on this region six months. Their search was rewarded with finds of some remarkable creatures hitherto almost wholly unknown to the science of paleontology. Most notable among these specimens is that of an animal never yet found outside of America—a huge mammal that represents a compromise between the elephant and the rhinoceros and which, singularly enough, was equipped with three sets of horns. Two pointed, upright sets of horns projected from the top of the head, two forward from the

end of the nose or snout downward, and two inclining with a slight curve backward, midway on the snout. The animal was a swamp and-lagoon denizen and the equipment denotes an aquatic root digger. Of this creature this New York party secured fifteen skulls and one entire skeleton, one of the skulls measuring over two and a half feet across, indicating a monster of no mean dimensions. As a courtesy to the Uintah Mountains, near a spur of which the whole aggregation was found, the beast was named Uintathericum, and palentology may add another oddity to its catalogues and another accession to its quantity of orthographical terror. Many, perhaps most, of these fossils are in solid, greenish sandstone, and when seen on the surface frequently stand out in bas-relief. But something far more appalling than a slowly depositing, alluvial process is necessary to account for the evidentr ly simultaneous death of a herd of any kind of creatures, and especially does this process not explain their fossils in compact sandstone. Another rare American specimen secured was the patirofelis, an entire skeleton of which was found at the foot of a cliff on a small tributary of Green River. This is the supposed ancestor of the modern feline tribes and is interesting as marking the advent of the swimming carnivora on the plane of development. Only two small broken pieces of jaw had hitherto been secured of this animal. Another large mammal found was the palseosyops. The snout was ornamented with a single twenty-

inch horn, an eocene product, and was then not larger than a modern sheep, but in 50,000 years had developed to almost elephantine proportions. His presentCongenaic cousins are the tapir and rhinoceros. These explorers also found the geological ancestor of the horse, but no longer than a shepherd dog, Tertiary Wyoming was semi-tropical, as numerous monkeys are in the collection, as well as other animals belonging to the warmer zones.

SKELETON OF A PATIROFELIS.

UINTATHERICUM.

SKULL OF THE PALÆ OSYOPS.