1865
  • Donations. Mr. Handel T. Martin, our assistant (HFO), presented us with 6 skulls and skeletons of "mosasaurus" from Kansas.. 30 casts were received in exchange from Paris, the British Mus. and Oxford Mus. From the Univ. Munich 360 specimens of European fossil mammals and birds were received. Expedition into the San Juan Basin. The party left the museum April 1st and was ready for the field April 14th. The party consisted of Mr. Barnum Brown, of the Univ. of Kansas, Mr. Walter Granger, Henry Snyder, cook and teamster, and Dr. Wortman. Their first camp was on the head of Gallinas where we first met with the Wasatch exposure. We remained in this camp for 10 days. The next camp was at Ojo San Jose, 15 miles to the south where we spent 2 weeks exploring the exposures to the west. Our success in these 2 camps was poor. We wished to head to SW toward the head of the Torrejon where numerous exposures could be seen. We went by way of Nacamiento and there hired a Mexican guide to pilot us to a small spring in the bad lands. The water supply at this camp (Ojo Diego Morales) was very meager. The badlands in that region we found to be very barren. We determined to try our luck on the head of the Rio Torrejon and accordingly shifted our camp to Ojo Encino. We met with our first exposures of underlying Puerco and had the good fortune to discover a fossil-bearing stratum in the upper part of the deposit. This layer, a reddish colored clay of various thickness, crops out to the westward in many places, especially in the heads of canyons, which put into the main Chaco, the principle drainage canyon lying west of the continental divide. We followed this outcrop for a distance of 50 to 60 miles to the west until we came to the place where the former expedition of the museum in 1893 and quit work and turned back. We then turned our attention to the lower Puerco exposures, but not a single fragment of bone was unearthed. The Cretaceous sediments underneath contained occasional fragments of large sauropod remains, but we did not find anything of sufficient importance to warrant making further explorations. Expedition into the Big Horn and Wind River Basins. We left Casper. WY on July 10th with the addition of E. S. Riggs from the University of Kansas and reached the collecting ground on the Grey Bull River on July 18th. This region had also been visited by the museum party in 1890. 6 weeks were spent by the party in this region and the adjoining Buffalo Basin searching for exposures. The results were most satisfactory. Near the end of August we started our return to Casper, stopping in the Wind River Basin for further explorations. We obtained another Coryphodon specimen. The party disbanded in Casper on Sept. 20th. Mr. Granger took the outfit to the Black Hills for the winter; Mr.'s. Brown and Riggs returned to Lawrence, KS and Wortman returned to the museum.
18951897