The whole summer was occupied in taking these animals
out for shipment to the East, the so-called "plaster method" of
removal being applied with the greatest success. Briefly, this is a
surgical device applied on a large scale for the "setting" of the
much-fractured bones of a fossilized skeleton. It consists in setting
great blocks of the skeleton, stone and all, in a firm capsule of
plaster subsequently reinforced by great splints of wood, firmly drawn
together with wet rawhide. The object is to keep all the fragments and
splinters of bone together until it can reach the skilful hands of the
museum preparator.
_The Rock Waves Connecting the Bluffs and the Quarry._ The Como Bluffs
are about ten miles south of the Bone-Cabin Quarry; between them is a
broad stretch of the Laramie Plains. The exposed bone layer in the two
localities is of the same age, and originally was a continuous level
stratum which may be designated as the "dinosaur beds;" but this
stratum, disturbed and crowded by the uplifting of the not far-distant
Laramie range of mountains and the Freeze Out Hills, was thrown into a
number of great folds or rock waves. Large portions, especially of the
upfolds, or "anticlines," of the waves, have been subsequently removed
by erosion; the edges of these upfolds have been exposed, thus
weathering out their fossilized contents, while downfolds are still
buried beneath the earth for the explorers of coming centuries.
Therefore, as one rides across the country to-day from the bluffs to
the quarry, startling the intensely modern fauna, the prong-horn
antelopes, jack-rabbits, and sage-chickens, he is passing over a vast
graveyard which has been profoundly folded and otherwise shaken up and
disturbed.
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