A MINE OF FOSSILS,

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1901, 1 June 1892, Page 5

A MINE OF FOSSILS,

One of the most remarkable discoveries of fossils ever mado is newly announced by Professor Cope, of Philadelphia. It is a great deposit of bones of extinct birds about a small lake in the sage-brush desert of central Oregon. Now, bird fossils are very hard to find, because their bones are so light and' fragile as to become easily scattered, and their bodies floated when they fell into the water, instead of sinking and becoming buried in the mud ; so that they were gobbled up and digested by alligators and various other swimming animals of carnivorous inclination. But presumably because conditions were more favorable than usual to their preservation, the bones of the water fowl and other feathered creatures which formerly lived about this Fossil Lake, as it is called, have been kept intact for centuries upon centuries, so that to-day there exists in that place the most wonderful mine of such treasures that is known in the world. The bones are found under very unusual conditions, namely — rcattered among the shifting sands about the shores of the lake, I instead of being contained in a matrix of solid rock. A large part of them are quite as perfect as v/hen the fowh to which they belong died and left them behind. Their bodies became buried in the sandy bottom, where the receding water hae left them high and dry. However, there are Beveral interesting points about the remains, apart from the mere antiquity of the species they represent, many of which are new to the ornithologist. They prove that, in the time when these bhds lived, that region, now so cold comparatively, was tropical. Among the species were flamingoes. Also, mixed with the bones, are dug up arrows and spear - heads chipped out of volcanic glass by human beings. The great abundance of these weapons suggests that they must have been shot at the game, both winged and otherwise, which in former time frequented the lake. No such things are found in the soil in the surrounding region. Therefore, the query offers itself : How long ago did man inhabit that part of tho country ? Was he a contemporary with these ancient birds and with the numerous extinct mammals whose remains are discovered about the water's edge ? It was a strange collection of creatures that once gathered about in this sma'l lake in Oregon, as the bones they have left behind them show. There were herds of horses which resembled zebras and quaggas, though whether they were striped or otherwise colored nobody can tell. Four species of camels there were, some as big as the largest which exist to-day, while the smallest was about the size of a Virginia deer. Whether they had humps or not it is impossible to know. In those times the whole country from New Jersey to Florida, and as far west as California, was overrun with camels. The farther back one gets in their history by digging for their fossils, the smaller they seem to have been, just as was the case with the horse, which was no bigger than a fox originally. The " bone yard," as the shores of Fossil Lake are locally called, wa3 originally discovered by cattlemen who were looking up stock which had wandered into this uninviting region. Their attention was excited by the multitude of skeletons which were distributed around, and they carried off many of the best specimens. Subsequent explorations by Professor Condon, of the University of Oregon, and Professor Cope, have produced remains of several varieties of llamas, mammoths, giant sloths us big as oxen, and ever bo many other astonishing curiosities. This great sloth, like the megatherium, which was as big as two elephants, and others of its kind, lumbered along with its hind feet turned inwards, club-foot fashion, this structure being designed by Nature to aid it in clinging to the branches of trees, on the foliage of which it fed, pulling them up by the root when it was desirable. When this species lived in the Oregon desert, that Bection of the country was presumably a tropical garden, abloom (in the neighborhood of the lake, at all events) with a luxuriant vegetation. Besides the beasts mentioned, the bone deposits show that there existed on the spot many extinct dogs, ottere, beavers, pocketgophers, and meadow mice. Of birds there were (in addition to the flamingoes) herons, looms, diners, guild, terns, swans, pelicans, cormorants, ducks, geese, mud-hens, snipe, grouse, owls, eagles, and crows. In all, fifty-one specimens of birds w^ro identified by their fossil remains, and of these sixteen never had been beard before. Two-thirds of the species are now extinct. Professor Cope describes the scene in this region of fossils as most impressive, owing to its wild desolation, As far aa the eye can reach is the same sage-brush desert, the same waterless dearth barren. ■ Many a man haa entered it, never to escape from its fatal drought, especially during the first days of the overland emigration to Oregon. The Wagontire Mountain, whose long and gloomy masa forms the north-eastern horizon, owns its name to the disastrous fate of an emigrant traiD. Coming from the east, they reached the mountain with parched mouths "and eyes aching from the heat and dust, expecting to find water for themselves and animals. But there is no water there. So the horses laid down and died, and nothing was left of the party but a few whitened bones and the iron tires of the waggon wheels. Many experienced hunters have been lost in this desert, so easy is it to miss the few small springs that arc found at remote intervals in this desolation of 150 miles in diameter east and west and north and south,