Hunting Dinosaurs in the Bad Lands of the Red Deer River, Alberta, Canada

Chapter I Sent Him Under That Title. All the Rest I Am Responsible for,

as I have had no assistance, and if I have published any thing that does not please my reader I hope they will overlook it.

How can I thank the Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, and Deputy Minister, Mr. R. G. McConnell, who has allowed me to use the photographs taken by my sons George and Charlie, to illustrate my pages. The text would have been dull indeed without them. Neither can I express my thanks for his unfailing kindness to me while I was under his authority as a member of the Survey. All the photographs (except the Front Piece Figures 1, 2, and 3, which were sent to me by my old friend, Dr. Osborn, President of the American Museum of Natural History, New York. The picture of a Portheus, from the London Illustrated News, the Figure of a Tylosaur by my son George F. Sternberg. The restoration of Diplodocus carnegii by Mr. C. W. Gilmore of the U. S. National Museum, and the figures 43, 44, and 45 taken last year by my son Levi) belong to the Survey. Mr. Clark in charge of the Division of Photography developed the photographs, and the Terre Haute Engraving Co. made the halftones. Neither can I forget the unvarying kindness of the former Deputy Minister, Dr. R. W. Brock who first employed me. For the great assistance he rendered me in field and shop. For his earnest assistance to help me build up a great collection of the Extinct Animals of Canada, at the Victoria Memorial Museum at Ottawa, Ontario. I hope these gentlemen and all others who have helped me to that end, will feel themselves included in this letter of thanks.

Faithfully yours, CHARLES H. STERNBERG.

CONTENTS

I. STORY OF A MONSTER FISH 1

II. THE TEEMING EAST 16

III. IN THE EDMONTON BEDS OF THE CRETACEOUS 33

IV. WE EXPLORE DEAD LODGE CANYON 49

V. HUNTING HORNED DINOSAURS 78

VI. PLATED DINOSAURS 90

VII. THE GREAT SPIKED DINOSAUR 101

VIII. A TRIP TO THE JUDITH RIVER 110

IX. ANOTHER STRANGE DINOSAUR 120

X. IN THE MILK RIVER COUNTRY 127

XI. THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS 134

XII. WHAT THE CRETACEOUS SEAS BROUGHT FORTH 156

XIII. THE WONDERS OF THE PERMIAN 180

XIV. CONCLUSION 200

INDEX 225

ILLUSTRATIONS

Front. Ideal Picture of Belly River Series Time by Deckert, of the American Museum of Natural History, New York.

Fig. 1. “Dinosaur Mummy” found by George F. Sternberg 4

Fig. 2. “Here the skin is preserved with its complex arrangement of minute scales” 5

Fig. 3. In 1909 Charles M. Sternberg discovered this magnificent Triceratops 8

Fig. 4. Portheus molossus, Cope 9

Fig. 5. Another skeleton George found, to add to the trophies of his hunt 9

Fig. 6. Mr. C. W. Gilmore’s wax figure of his ideal Diplodocus carnegii 20

Fig. 7. A huge Titanotherium 21

Fig. 8. Trachodon annectens, Marsh 26

Fig. 9. Traveling on Red Deer River, Alberta 27

Fig. 10. Steveville at the mouth of Berry Creek, Alberta 48

Fig. 11. Charlie’s carnivore as he found it 49

Fig. 12. Preparing Charlie’s Carnivore 52

Fig. 13. Loading Carnivore with triplex tackle 53

Fig. 14. Quarry after Carnivore was removed 56

Fig. 15. Sternberg’s camp three miles below Steveville, Alberta 57

Fig. 16. Skeleton of Lambe’s Stephanosaurus 66

Fig. 17. Sections of Stephanosaurus skeleton 67

Fig. 18. “I climbed the rugged buttes and ridges” 70

Fig. 19. Pillars cut from the solid rock 71

Fig. 20. Outlying Butte over 300 feet high 76

Fig. 21. Levi founded a crested dinosaur 77

Fig. 22. Excavation after taking out Charlie’s Stephanosaurus 82

Fig. 23. Charlie’s new Trachodon 83

Fig. 24. Prepared skull of Gryposaurus, Lambe, Kritosaurus, Brown 88

Fig. 25. The strata of clay thins out to nothing 89

Fig. 26. Discovery of George’s Chasmosaurus, (Ceratops) 94

Fig. 27. George’s Chasmosaurus, lying in quarry 95

Fig. 28. Levi wrapping Chasmosaurus 100

Fig. 29. Chasmosaurus Quarry 101

Fig. 30. George preparing his Chasmosaurus 104

Fig. 31. Skull of Chasmosaurus restored by Weber 105

Fig. 32. Sternberg’s camp three miles below “Happy Jack Ferry” 108

Fig. 33. Styracosaurus in the bottom of gorge 109

Fig. 34. Top view of Styracosaurus, prepared by C. H. Sternberg 112

Fig. 35. Charlie’s Centrosaurus in the rock 113

Fig. 36. Putting Irons on crest of Centrosaurus 120

Fig. 37. George at work on C. H. Sternberg’s Centrosaurus, (Monoclonius) 121

Fig. 38. Centrosaurus, discovered by Charles H. Sternberg 130

Fig. 39. Limb of Gorgosaurus, mounted by C. M. Sternberg 131

Fig. 40. Quarry of George’s Plated Dinosaur 140

Fig. 41. Packing up a Loveland Ferry 1915 141

Fig. 42. Badlands of the Red Deer River below Steveville 150

Fig. 43. Badlands near Steveville. Photograph by Levi Sternberg 151

Fig. 44. Badlands near Steveville. Notice cross bedding 160

Fig. 45. Quarry with skeleton of Corythosaurus lost at sea 1916 161

Fig. 46. Charlie letting his plated dinosaur down 150 feet 170

Fig. 47. Hauling out fossil 171

Fig. 48. Urn-like Mass of Rock 180

Fig. 49. Egyptian Sphynx-like rock 181

Fig. 50. Dog Cr. Montana. Notice effects of vulcanism 190

Fig. 51. Badlands near Cow Island, Montana 191

Fig. 52. Badlands of the Missouri River 200

CHAPTER I. Story of a Monster Fish

STORY OF A MONSTER FISH

When I wrote the preface to “The Life of a Fossil Hunter,” I little thought of the wonderful discoveries and remarkable changes that awaited me during the seven years that were to follow. Now, in a reminiscent mood, I sit down to tell the readers of my autobiography, the story of the last seven years spent in the fossil fields, or in the laboratory preparing for study, the material that I have collected.

Two seasons my sons and I collected in the Kansas Chalk, the Lance Beds of the old Converse County that is now named Niobrara County, Wyoming, and in the Oligocene, of the same County. Strange to say, however, five years have been spent in the Dominion of Canada, where, with the assistance of my three sons, I helped build up a great collection of the Dinosaurs of the Red Deer River, Alberta, under the direction of the Geological Survey of Canada. The present year of 1916, with the help of my youngest son Levi, I have been engaged in the same service for the British Museum of Natural History. As my readers will bear witness, in the past, I have seen my choicest treasures for forty years leave my hands forever, to add to the glories of museums I shall in all probability never see. When the opportunity came, however, so suddenly and unexpectedly--the opportunity of a life time--to crown my last days with a monument that only time’s ravages or the vandal hand of man can efface, in that growing Dominion of the North that promises to be one of the great countries in the boundless Western Hemisphere, it seemed to me like a call from heaven. Though the ties of a lifetime, nearly, that bound me to many a dear friend at Lawrence, Kansas, must be severed. Though I must leave the protecting folds of my father’s flag and mine, and I must live under a flag that has waved a thousand years--under a Monarch, in fact--I, a republican of republicans! Think of it! After three years residence in the beautiful city of Ottawa, the capital of all the broad expanse North of the international line, after four seasons of work among buried dinosaurs and three winters spent in the laboratory of the Victoria Memorial Museum of Ottawa, I am free to confess I would not have known so far as personal liberty is concerned that I was all this time in the employ of his Royal Majesty George the Fifth of England and ruler of the British Empire. I have learned, I believe, that a man is as much a man amidst the snows of the Lady of the North, under the Union Jack, as under my own beloved Stars and Stripes. Our hopes, our ideals, our aims are much the same.

I will hurry over the first two years spent in the fossil fields of the United States after Henry Holt and Company published “The Life of a Fossil Hunter.” In 1910 we went to Wyoming. On Schneider Creek my second son, Charles M., made the discovery of the most remarkable duck-billed dinosaur the world has ever seen. The Trachodon I described in the last Chapter of “The Life of a Fossil Hunter” was the best one that had been discovered up to that time. Professor R. S. Lull of Yale University in speaking of the specimen George F. Sternberg had found in 1908 says in his paper, “On Ten Years Progress in Dinosaurs,” page 210 Proceedings of the Paleontological Society, 1912: “Impressions of the skin of this animal (Trachodon or duck-billed dinosaur), were already known from material in Washington, and from the fragment of a tail collected by Barnum Brown. It remained for the veteran collector Charles H. Sternberg however, in 1908, in Converse County, to bring to light by the aid of his three sons the most marvelously preserved dinosaur known to (Fig. 1) science. Here the skin is preserved with its complex arrangement of minute scales (Fig. 2) entirely bereft of defensive armor. Together with portions of the muscles, as well as the entire skeleton, with the exception of the hind feet and tail. This specimen was purchased of Mr. Sternberg by the American Museum and is now on exhibition.”

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