File:Osteology of Haplocanthosaurus - with description of a new species, and remarks on the probable habits of the Sauropoda and the age and origin of the Atlantosaurus beds (1903) (14745883016).jpg

Identifier: osteologyofhaplo21hatc (find matches)
Title: Osteology of Haplocanthosaurus : with description of a new species, and remarks on the probable habits of the Sauropoda and the age and origin of the Atlantosaurus beds
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Hatcher, J. B. (John Bell), 1861-1904 Carnegie Museum
Subjects: Saurischia Diplodocus
Publisher: Pittsburgh : Published by the authority of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institute
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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Image description: Fig. 23: Fotograph of footprint in Jurassic sandstone, near Canyon City, Colorado.

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ch are characteristic of them, I am convincedthat neither the character of the vertebrate fauna nor the facts of stratigraphy atany one of these places can be taken as affording anything like conclusive evidenceof the presence of a great body of water. At several of these localities, however, theoccurrence at intervals of sandstones showing frequent examples of cross-bedding. HATCHKR : OSTEOLOGY OF HAPI.OfANTHOSAURUS 61 ripple marks and even occasionally exhibiting footprints is conckisive proof thatsuch sandstones had not their origin in the midst of a great lake, while the presencealmost everj^where of the remains of terrestrial reptiles and less frequently ofmammals tells only too plainly of an adjacent land-mass. In all this region I knowof no locality where any c()nsidei-al)le extent of the Atlantosaurus beds occurs, inwhich remains of quadrupedal, terrestrial dinosaurs have not been found. To mymind, this fact alone affords very strong presumptive evidence that in Jurassic times
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Fig. 23. Photograph of footprint in Jura.ssic sandstone, near Canyon City, Colorado. this entire region was the habitat of these dinosaurs, which it could not have beenhad it been covered by a great lake, for the structure of their limbs shows con-clusively that the Dinosauria were not aquatic. Nor can I conceive of the possi-bility of the carcasses of terrestrial animals being carried out into the midst of sogreat a lake as that presupposed above and left in such abundance as the numbersof their bones in these deposits would indicate. An hypothesis, which it appears torae is far more reasonable and more nearly in accordance with the facts as we nowknow them, is to consider this region as presenting in late Jurassic and early Creta- 62 MEMOIRS OF THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM ceous times the appearance of a low and comparatively level plain, with numerous,lakes, both large and small, connected by an interlacing system of river channels.The whole, when covered over with luxuriant forests and bro

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