The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 9, 1899, Page 23

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, APRIL 9, Dicaing For FossILs. 2 —~ o TR, 7 / 7 / 7 (L 77 7 // i 2l L ossil Whale Founa on « Wfoun ROCK P-ORMATION P WHERE THE FOSSILS WERE FOUND . e e R b T SR SR S e A ab b b 2t SR SN SR SR SR P S SR S P S S SRS + + PROFESSOR LAWSON’S OPINION AS TO HOW THE WHALE’S HEAD CAME ¢ ¥ ; c 4 TO BE ON TOP OF THE COAST RANGE. + 2 " HE history of the Coast Range of California,” said Professor Lawson of the State University, “is that 4 e of a series of risings and submersions. Long ago, when the Sierra Nevada Mountains were firmly lo- 4 - I cated where they are now, after having passed through the formation process of the Juarassic period, + + the coast of California was In a state of great disturbance. + + ““The whole range of country was constantly being upheaved and then low d again into the depths of 4 4 the ocean. From all we can learn this happened about seven times. The last time this happened it re- + G A ned beneath the water for centuries and centuries, long enough for the sandstone to be deposited. As + * t different marine creatures dled, the whale among them, the solid parts, such as bone, settled into the 4 + sand and became imbedded there. Then ages and ages passed until several feet of solid stone were on top + 4 of the whale’s bones. - 7 + “When the last upheaval came the whole bottom of the ocean was lifted skyward and naturally the re- 4 + mains of all kinds of fish, etc., were taken along and left miles and miles inland from tfre water. That is + 4 the reason that we can go down into Monterey Cotnty and dig fish bones that are thousands of years old. + + “The common supposition that a tidal wave once swept over the country and left the creatures to die on + 4 the mountain tops is only a supposition that has not the least foundation in geological fact.” + + + B e e e e R R S S S S S S S R & kR RN SR SR S SR SR SR SR S SP PO eg FOSSIL whale's head, the remains finder of this valuable specimen, is a ge- rious sp tnowledge he of oysters and other things of the ologist by nature and spends nearly the knows . and it is certainly sea have just been unearthed in w! of his time poking about among a pity found most of the Monterey County, at a place rocks and digging into the earth for cu- fossils coming from the Jamesburg coun- feet above the sea level and eigh- teen miles inland from the present 7 coast % ® Monterey County has furnished many & strange bones of past life to the prying & sclentist, but nothing more curious than g this has come out of her hills. Sclentists agree thgt it is the most important find of its kind in recent years. The James- burg reglon, in which these fossil remains were discovered, contains an area about sixty miles square which has proved ex- ceedingly rich in relics of ancient man and other animals. Specimens found In the Santa Lucia Mountains, six miles south of Salinas, re- mains of extinct animals and pecullar rock formations are also very valuable, being second only to those coming from the Jamesburg country. A noteworthy fact regarding these fos- stls is that the petrifactions of land ani- mals are nearly all found at a much lower sltitude than those of marine animals, the remains of a mastodon have come from t la Mountains some 300 feet while a e's head fos- &f d oysters, fish fins, barna- 1 r forms of sea_ life were found embedded in a ridge of sandstone at least 2500 feet above the sea ce of eighteen miles nd. ¢ be able to explain this tural consequence of dad ditions in accordance on from one geological head was found on the ar Jamesburg, and not » Springs. It is n of a portion where it § the v e e socket and scernible. The » of the ngth ) inches In le head, inches in thickness, and It was discovered two of the Jam rd, and lenford made use of the ith which to disinter the relic it is probable s misfortune might have been ed. The pieces broken from it haveall been preserved and can readily be fitted to their ald piaces »f the ridge from whic aken is one of the higa g mountains, of ascer- parison by is known that it i not less than %000 feet above the sea. Clenford, the rounding points the altitude aof | ‘ Bpecial to The Sunday Call. NLY two or three men in a century poscess the regal gift of being a genius in many things. Professor O. C. Marsh of Yale University, who dled recently, was endowed witan such a gift to a remarkable degnee. Besides be- ing one of the most distinguished of American sclentists, and perhaps the most famous paleontologist in the world, he won a wide renown outside of his scien- tific work as a daring and successful ex- plorer, as a connoisseur in Japanese art, as a lover and collector of rare orchids, as + champlon of the American Indians, and, supremely, as a story teller and writer of many sclentific works. He spent a long life and a considerable fortune in building up a great public mu- seum at Yale College. He never drew a penny of salary for his services as a pro- fessor, and about a year ago, when his | health began to fall, he made over all his vast and priceless collections to the uni- <ty and died a comparatively poor man. Two Small Bones Led to Fame. Fame and sclence are supposed to come with gray hairs. Profeéssor Marsh was known everywhere In the sclentific world at the age of 31. This sudden rise to fame was the result of a discovery which he made while he was yet a student at Phil- lips Academy, Andover. During one of his summer vacations he was tramping among the cliffts of Nova Scotia and he picked up by accident two odd bits of fos- He found them lying close to- r, like two checkers, one partially They were cylin- in form, with sauserlike hollows at , end, and o Insignificantly small that 2 man might close his hand around them. Young Marsh, already deeply interested in geology and mineralogy, dropped the bones into the pocket of his shooting jacket and carried them with him. He passed from Andover to Yale, where he was graduated with honors in 1860, and then he entered the Sheffield Scientific | School. All this time he treasured the two fossil bones and their significance as & geological discovery became plainer to him with every added year of study. From the shape, size and relative posi- tion in which they were discovered, he knew them to be the vertebra of some enormous animal of prehistoric origin; but he had found them in a coal forma- tion and the authorities gave no hint of creatures so highly developed in a geo- logical age 80 remote. He belleved that the two vertebrae indicated a hitherto unknown link between the flshes and the reptiles. He showed the bones to the famous geologist, Dana, and to Professor Jeffries Wyman of Harvard. They told him to see Agassiz, who knew more about fishes, living and extinct, than any other man. Agassiz examined the bones with keen interest, and Inquired where they were found. When young Marsh told him the story of thelr discovery and ventured to outline his theorfes, the great scientist shook his head emphatically. “Impossible,” he said. Studied Two Bones for Months. But young Marsh was certain that he had made an important discovery. At the suggestion of Professor Wyman he devoted six months to the study of the two little bones and their relationship to the remains of other extinct monsters; then he described them accurately in a published account, naming the animal from which they came the Eosaurus, the “dawn of lizards,” the first reptilian re- mains to be found in the coal measures of America. The discovery of the Eosau- rus came as strong affirmative gvidence, showing conclusively the’ relationship be- tween two widely different classes of an- imal life. At the instance of Sir Charles Lyell, the eminent English geologist, young Marsh’'s paper was read before the august Geological Society of London and its author was voted a fellow. It was translated Into German and the young scientist was asked to acrept the honor of a membership in the Geological Soci- ety of Berlin. In America Yale College was prompt with its appreciation of the value -of the discovery, and although ‘young Marsh was then just graduated A m h STEGOSAURYUS UNGULATUS ARMOR PLATED LiZARD 25 FEET LONG. tam *Ua,v 1899. 23 OOOO0000OOOOOOIOAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0 © © [ (] © SCELIDOSAURUS Or Discovered Among Ocean Deposits 2500 o -Feet Above the Sea Level and Eighteen © Miles Inland From the Coast Line. 3 0000000000000 00C0C0C00C0C000000 o EeTRIFIED WWHALE'S HEAD VFOUND TN SANTA LUCiA RANGE 00 FT. ABOVE i SSEN LEVEL . GREAT GROUND SLOTH OR BIG LIMBED LIZARD MEGATHERIUM 20FEET LONG AMERICANUM. LENGTH IS FEET. ANCIENT ANIMALS, FAR LARGER THAN THE ELEPHANT, RECONSTRUCTED BY THE LATE PROFESSOR MARSH. try he did not have sufficient knowledge of their position, surrounding formations and other conditions to be able to deter- mine their approximate and sclentific value. Montere; County has long -been scie to be wonderfully fcally Is attested by the fol- ct from a letter written in ssor H. D. Long of the State known rich geol lowing e 1877 by Pro: University: “I have never seen a section of country 80 rich In fossil remalns as Monterey County, nor one so easy to study. The part lying in the neighborhood of the Corral de Tierra contains strata whose relative position. is so plain to even the tical eye that ‘he who runs its geological history. “I note in that vicinity five fossil-bear- ing strata; the lowermost being of an average thickness.of five feet and con- talning rems of at least four mol- and unio being repre- S/ Above this T found, in very soft sandstone, many univalve shells of the type of barnacles, contained in a stratum about one yard in thickness. Superim- from the Sheffleld Scientific School, he was offered a seat in the university fac- ulty as professor of paleontology. Discovered a Bird With Teeth. With such unusual recognition as this, Protessor Marsh began a scientific career in which he was destined to accomplish more than any other one man perhaps in establishing the theory of evolution by actual discoverles. Darwin had buflt a magnificent hypothesis; Huxley had been its great expounder, and now came Marsh and other brilllant younger scien- tists, to whom a whole universe had been suddenly lald bare by a great idea, and by adding link after link to the chain of extinct life, helped to make the theory of development a sclentific truth, capa- ble of actual objective demonstration. As a single instance, opponents of evolution had cited the wide break between the two classes of birds and reptiles, declar- ing that doctrine could not bridge it over. In their definition of birds the zoologists of the time made toothlessness a cardinal characteristic; no birds familiar to sci- ence possessed any teeth. But Professor Marsh, exploring our own Rocky Moun- tain reglon, found the remains of a strange swimming bird with two well- developed rows of teeth. A little later he discovered other reptilellke birds ana birdlike reptiles, showing some of the ac- tual steps by which the saurian of a mil- lion years ago became in the slow prog- ress of the ages the feathered and tooth. less bird of to-day. “My first great ambition,” Professor Marsh once told me, ‘‘was to shoot as well as old Colonel Jewett,” a famous hunter of Western New York, and a great friend of his. “I was not satisfied until I could bring down a squirrel from the top crotch of a big hickory, where I could see only a tip of a red nose and one eye,” His roving outdoor life made him a keen observer, and gave him-the rugged vitality to withstand any degree of hard- ship. ‘“1f T had known what my future ca- reer was to be,” he sald, “I could not have mapped out my boyhood better,” posed - upon the latter is a stratum, of thickness varying from seven feet to six- ty feet, almost entirel ade up of cas of unios and peeteus in ‘dog-tooth spa (er: lized carbonate stratum I consider as t} able of all, both on mense thickness and the enormous num- ber of shell-casts that are contained in it —not lesd I should say, than 10,000 per cubic foot. Above the last described stratum there exists a layer of reddish sandstone one and one-half feet in thick- ness, containing.remains of two of the before-mentioned bivalves. “Last of all and latest In its formation is the familiar white, soft material called h, ‘chalk-rock’ by the farmers, but in reality, is no more chalk than a bric is chalk. It is simply hardened cla may be felt by applying the tongue, sub- stances composed of or containing clay always sticking to:that memher. The rock is white, with a conchoidal fracture, and is of light specific gravity. In some localities the color shades somewhat, but still the rock possesses nearly the same characteristics. In the tertiary epoch, Hunting With Buffalo Bill. It was this sturdy young scholar who led the first great sclentific expedition into the Rocky Mountains in the year 1870. Buffalo Bill, Colonel W. F. Cody, was the guilde chosen to lead the expedition into the alkall plains, hitherto untrodden by the feet of white men. The Indians menaced them- constantly, burning the dry grass around their camps and watch- ing them jealously from every hilltop. They suffered the want of water and they burned under the blazing western sun, but for five months they scanned the colored cliffs amd. collected hundreds of new and wonderful fossils, the mere description and classification of which was almost a life’'s work. The sclentific value of this expedition and those of many succeeding years can- not be overestimated. Professor Marsh unearthed the remains of over one thou- sand vertebrate animals new to science, most of which he has named and de- seribed. Among them were the ancestral forms of the modern horse, of the tapir and the pig, and of the first monkeys and bats discovered in America, showing that this country was once the home of nimer- ous simian tribes. He also found many rodents and small marsuplals; many gi- gantic dinogaurs, “terrible lizards”; fhe dinocerata, which were huge hoofed ani- mals as large as elephants and formldably armed with horns; extinct sea serpents; the enormous brontotheridae, and the stegasaurus. The discovery of the birds with teeth, already alluded to, and the pterodactyls, or flying dragons, the first to be found in America, also resulted from these explorations. Origin of the Horse. Perhaps the most wonderful dlscovery made by Professor Marsh during these expeditions was the serles of fossil horses, ““‘When a student In Germany,” he once told me, “I heard a world renowned pro- fessor of zoology gravely inform his pu- _plls that the horse was a gift from the old world to the new and was entirely un- known to America until introduced by the Spaniards. After the lecture I asked, him whether no earlier remains of horses @oQC«Q@@@Q@QO@@@QOOOQ@‘(‘0@@@Q@@QO@@@@Q@@OOQ@QOOOQQQ@@0000@9@009@0@0@@0@@@@@@90@@@@@@00@@9@@@9 STORIES OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SCIENTIST, PROF. MARSH. At the Time of His Death, Last Month, He Was Said to Be the Most Distinguished Geologist in the World: Won Fame When 3! Years Old, Explored the West With Buffalo Bill; Exposed the Cardiff Giant; Explained the Carson Footprints, and Reconstructed @ncient Monsters. COPP00000000000000000000000000800000000 0600000000000 086000008080060000680206000060806600600 when this clay rock was soft clay grow- ing In thickness by deposition from the overlying sea or lake, many shells of tur- ritella and fewer of a smaller mollusk; | with a few scattered specimens of a uni- | valve almost microscopic in size, became | imbedded therein. Afterward, both be- fore and since the hardening of this clay, | the surrounding country has. been sub- | ject to many upheavals and disturbances which have resulted . In the extensive tracture and variable dip of the stratum, | the latter varying from 12 to 40. degrees. | All these strata belong to. the tertiary. | “This is merely an outline of the dis-| coveries I have made fh this hitherto | neglected fleld. Of the fifteen or more specles of fossils, T have identified nine— all belonging to the department of mol- | lusks."” Recent discoverfes have shown the field to be both larger and richer than former- Iy known, the already discovered fossils | ranging from microscopic remains of diatoms, sponges and other organic structures to those of mammoth prehis- torfc animals. PPPOPOPOSODS 00000009 | had been found on this continent, and was told in reply that the reports to the effect were too unsatisfactory to be presented as faects {n sclence. This remark led me on my return to examine the subject my- self, and I have since unearthed no fewer than thirty distinct species of the horse tribe; and it is now, I think, generally ad- mitted that America is, after all, the orig- inal home of the horse.” Exposed the Cardiff Giant. It was Professor Marsh who exposed the famous Cardiff glant. In October, 1869, a farmer named Newell, living near Curdiff, N. Y., twelve miles south of Sy- racuse, was digging a well when he un- | expectedly unearthed a stone giant ten | feet long with a body, head and limbs in ! perfect proportion. It was at once pro- claimed as the remains of.a- prehistoric man, and numbers of scientists made pil- | grimages of examination and recorded their belief In its very great value as a | scientific discovery. Even the State geol- | ogist of New York became greatly inter- | ested in the giant and endeavored to have | it sent to the State Museum at Albany. But it was finally placed on exhibition at | Syracuse, where it soon became an at- | traction almost equal to a circus. | Special trains were run from the sur- | rounding country to accommodate the people who wished to see it, and fts | owners are said to have refused an offer | of $300,000 in cash for it, although they subsequently parted with a quarter share. So important did the relic become in,the éyes of the sclentific world that Professor | Marsh visited Syracuse and made an ex- | amination of the giant. The next day he | wrote to a friend: | “It is of very recent origin, and a most | decided humbug.” | He fdund that the fimure had been | cut from a block of gypsum, similar to ! that found in many parts of New York, | and a close inspection revealed the pru-l ence of human workmanship. | ““As gypsum is soluble in about 400 | parts of water,” he wrote, “‘a very short | exposure would suffice to obliterate ali | traces of tool marks and also to roughen the surtaces.” - = i | “tor Professor Marsh's letter was published in a Buffalo newspaper. The account of how the stone man was made had the effect of stimulating the manufacture of giants, and to the astonishment of every one half a dozen Cardiff giants were be- ing exhibited around the country within & year. Recently the practical joker who made the giant told the story of his de- ception for the first time. Killed a Prehistoric Giant. Years latér marvelous accounts came from Nevada of the discovery of human footprints in the sandstone strata at Car- son City. Each of the prints was from eighteen to twenty inches long, about eight inches wide, having the exact shape of a moccasined human foot. There were regular right and left tracks, with a dis- tance between them of from eighteen to nineteen inches. They were. at once pro- claimed as the remaining evidences of a race of giants which once inhabited the Pacific Coast, and the undoubted authen- ticity of the impressions on the stone in- duced not a few men of scientific pre- tensions to take this view, Such a discov- ery at once aroused the keen interest of Professor Marsh, but after an examina- tion of the prints he came to the conclu- sion that they were not made by men at all. He read a paper on the subject to the National Academy of Sciences with which he presented a carefully drawn plcture of the huge skeleton foot of an extinct sloth found In the same general region and in the same geological hori- zon. A comparison of this with the out- line of the footprint showed conclusively that it was a sloth and not a man that had strolled slowly along the shore of this prehistoric lake and left his footprints on the sands of time. Professor Marsh was also fond of tell- ing of an encyclopedia article which was commended to his attention. The writer, wishing to give modern man a graphio idea of the appearance of his remote an- cestors, had made a restoration of an ex- tinct animal in flesh and blood, but unfor- tunately he had placed the head on the énd of the tail. Marsh, the Man. Personally, Professor Marsh wore fow | of the conventional airs of the scientist. He was a rugged-shouldered, firmly bullt man, a little under medium height, with white hair and a full white beard, a high forehead rising above a palr of engaging blue eyes. You met him with a golfing cap pulled down comfortably over his head, a long, black coat hanging loosely from-his shoulders, and a bit of color in his neckecloth. He moved with a certain nervous energy that bespoke his active mind, and upon the first provocation he told you a story—and a very good one, too. Professor Marsh never married. “I have been too busy with my work,” he sald. In such honors as fall to men who have won distinction in science Profes- sor Marsh had an unusual share. For seventeen years he was president of the Natlonal Academy of Sciences, perhaps the foremost scientific society {n America. and presidgnt of the American Assocla- tion for the Advancement of Science. In 1877 he received the first of the Bigsby medals from the Geological BSoclety of London, and last year the Institute of France, by presenting him with the Cu- vier prize, conferred upon him the great- est honor that can fall to a sciéntist. The Cuvler prize {s awarded every three years the most remarkable work either on the animal kingdom or on geology." Only two other Americans have recelved this distinction—Agassiz and Leidy, the paleontologist. RAY STANNARD BAKER.