The Dinosaurs of Wyoming - Wyoming State Geological Survey ...

PREFACE
The subject of dinosaurs in general, and the dinosaurs of
Wyoming in particular, has interested me since the spring of
1904, when for the first time I dropped off the train at Rawlins
for a summer's work in the fossil beds of the Wind River
Mountain area. I found the party waiting, ready to start in
a light wagon equipped with the bows for a canvas cover-a
common sight. We soon started on our drive to Lander, one
hundred and fifty miles away-a full week's journey in those
days. After that summer I spent several more seasons in the
Wyoming fossil fields, either vvith Dr. S. \V. Williston as companion
or working under his directions.
In the many camps we had together Dr. Williston told me
of his work at Como Bluffs, excavating dinosaur bones for
Professor Marsh; a terribly lonely job during the early winter
months of the late seventies. As an amateur dipterologist
I had in my bag the second edition of vVilliston's Manual of
Jorth American Diptera. I shall never forget the keen
pleasure derived from hearing the author tell how in his despair
at not being allowed to write about dinosaurs, a form of
activity which Professor Marsh reserved for himself, he had
turned to the study of the Diptera, a study at which he became
famous. But ever mingled in with other talk there was
always that background of the huge, ungainly dinosaurian
. reptiles, making a unique appeal to our fancy. What were the
dinosaurs? Where had they come from? Why had so many
lived and left their bones in the area now called \iVyoming?
What was their manner of life? To what reptilian group were
they related?
During the three years I spent in Williston's laboratory as
Fellow in Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of
Chicago, our discussions of dinosaurian affairs were of the
greatest interest. In one of our daily searches for marine reptiles
in Wyoming, especially the plesiosaurs, we one day came
across a tangled lot of fossil bones, so broken and water worn
that we couldn't tell what great group of vertebrates the fragments
represented. 'vVe thought it might be a giant turtle.
One interesting looking chunk was taken to camp, where in
a red-water irrigation ditch Dr. \Villiston scrubbed off the
crust of mud in which the specimen was caked. After he had
cleaned it somewhat I heard him say: "By George, Moodie,
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