S.W. WILLISTON.
THE DINOSAURS OF THE BONE-CABIN QUARRY.[20]
_By Henry Fairfield Osborn._
One is often asked the questions: "How do you find fossils?" "How do
you know where to look for them?" One of the charms of the
fossil-hunter's life is the variety, the element of certainty combined
with the gambling element of chance. Like the prospector for gold, the
fossil-hunter may pass suddenly from the extreme of dejection to the
extreme of elation. Luck comes in a great variety of ways: sometimes
as the result of prolonged and deliberate scientific search in a
region which is known to be fossiliferous; sometimes in such a prosaic
manner as the digging of a well. Among discoveries of a highly
suggestive, almost romantic kind, perhaps none is more remarkable than
the one I shall now describe.
_Discovery of the Great Dinosaur Quarry._ In central Wyoming, at the
head of a "draw," or small valley, not far from the Medicine Bow
River, lies the ruin of a small and unique building, which marks the
site of the greatest "find" of extinct animals made in a single
locality in any part of the world. The fortunate fossil-hunter who
stumbled on this site was Mr. Walter Granger of the American Museum
expedition of 1897.
In the spring of 1898, as I approached the hillock on which the ruin
stands, I observed, among the beautiful flowers, the blooming cacti,
and the dwarf bushes of the desert, what were apparently numbers of
dark-brown boulders.
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