The powerful front fins are armed with an outer ray that moves on a joint in the pectoral arch, a long recurved piece of solid bone, enameled on the outer side and more powerful as a weapon than a cavalryman’s sword. This single-edged sword is three feet long, and commands the respect of its owner’s enemies, the great saurians, or Kansas mosasaurs. Our fish has only to swim up close to the abdomen of a sleeping reptile, and lay it open for several feet with one sudden stroke. If that is not sufficient, a slap of the powerful tail, with a span of nearly four feet, finishes the work.
But see! nearer and nearer the great fish comes, mouthful after mouthful of the fishes falling into its horrid jaws. It must be starving; so eager is it for its prey that it seems unconscious of the fact that the tide has turned and is moving outward. Now it discovers its danger and turns, but too late. The water has gone back to the deep, leaving it struggling for breath in a shallow pool. It thrashes wildly about with its tail, whose sticky secretions help to envelop it more and more thickly with mud and slime, until at last its struggles cease.
And then the scene changes. The old ocean disappears, and we stand, George and I, three thousand feet above sea level, on Hay Creek, in Logan County, among crumbling ruins of denuded and eroded chalk; and working with pick and shovel in the burning sun, we bring the mighty carcass once more to the light of day.
But I hope to take my readers into this field again, and will pass on now to my expedition in the Bad Lands with Professor Cope.
CHAPTER III EXPEDITION WITH PROFESSOR COPE TO THE BAD LANDS OF THE UPPER CRETACEOUS, 1876
About the first of August, 1876, Mr. Isaac and I were in Omaha, awaiting the arrival of Professor Cope from Philadelphia.
We met him at the depot, and I remember his watching me with astonishment as I limped along the street on my crippled leg. At last, turning to Isaac, whom he knew to be a horseman, he asked, “Can Mr. Sternberg ride a horse?”
Isaac answered: “I’ve seen him mount a pony bareback and cut out one of his mares from a herd of wild horses.”
That satisfied the Professor, and when we got to Montana, he gave me the worst-tempered pony in the bunch.