Dead A Million Years

1895

Priceless Bones From the Historic Waters of Bitter Creek

Men who once become interested in queer bugs and animals with which nature has peopled every part of the earth become so devoted to study of animal and plant life and so deeply interested in the bones of the man, woman or monkeys that lived and loved and died so many hundred thousand years ago that no personal sacrifice is too great for them to make in pursuit of their calling.

Prof. J. S. Worthman has just returned from the mountains of southern Wyoming, bringing with him the priceless treasure. It is the skeleton of a supposed human being dead some millions of years more or less, and may lead to the establishment of the missing link. The bones were found in the historic waters of Bitter Creek from which the fiery tempered cowboy is supposed to rise before spilling the blood of the towns-people in general. "The skeleton," says Prof. Worthman, "of a human body estimated to be a million and a half years old has interested scientists keenly. The Professor says the priceless skeleton was found near the head of Bitter Creek in Southern Wyoming, about ten miles from the Colorado line. The region was once the bed of a fresh water lake. Sediment gradually accumulated through unknown centuries until it formed a deposit two thousand to four thousand feet thick. The sage inhabitant whose remains are now disclosed to the eye of man was apparently drowned in the lake. His body was preserved as in an Egyptian mummy cave. By and by the water receded, new forces began to operate, mountain streams rippled across the dry lake bottoms, great chasms were out through the soft earth and the skeleton was exposed on the surface of a vast cliff.

The bones were broken in pieces and portions fell to the base of the cliff. Professor Worthman came along in the nick of time. His practiced eye detected the presence of an unusual specimen, but who can describe his joy as he stopped and picked up the tooth of a monkey? "The fragments of bones," said the Professor, "were many of them almost as small as a pin head and it required many hours of time and great patience to gather the pieces together until we could make one perfect whole. We gathered all the surface dirt over an area of twenty-five or thirty feet square and washed it out as the miner washes out the gravel for gold. Then we located the original resting place of the skeleton in the side of the cliff and dug out the remaining bones."

Length of the Skeleton

The Professor says he did not attempt to take complete measurements, but he estimates the skeleton to be two and a half feet long, forming an animal about the size and with the general make-up of a species of monkey, known as the white-faced capuchin. The Professor says some of the bones are missing, but the skull is complete, and it would be a simple thing for any paleontologist to draw a complete picture of the representative of the human race as he appeared long years ago.

Soon after his return to New York Professor Worthman will issue a pamphlet, giving a full scientific description of the skeleton and deductions to be drawn from the discovery. In this work he will be assisted by Prof. Osborne, curator of the museum and professor of biology in the college. Professor Worthman is a modest man and spoke guardedly of the conquest he has made over old Father Time, in grasping from the aged gentleman's hand one of the most sacredly guarded mysteries. In fact, the Professor talked just as enthusiastically about other finds that were made as about the skeleton of the monkey.

"Our object in coming to the west last summer," said he, "was to look for fossils which were deposited at the close of the cretaceous epoch, a period when the sea receded, the Rocky Mountain plateau arose and the fresh water lakes of the mountain region came gradually into existence. It was one of the greatest changes known in the geological history of the American continent.

"Another find," said the Professor, "and one in which the general public may be interested, was the skeleton of what is known as the little horse. This horse was the ancestor of the present species. It may perhaps surprise you if I say that this animal was no larger than a shepherd dog. Instead of a single toe, he had no less than four toes on each of his fore feet and three on his hind feet. The story of the evolution of the horse is one of the most convincing proofs of the doctrine of evolution. We now have materials to demonstrate to the most casual observer the evolution of this remarkable animal from his primitive beginning, away back in the commencement of the eocene period, at least 1,500,000 years ago, up to the present moment."