1940
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From Walter Granger, 1940 report. Field work in the Big Bad Lands was carried on from the base
in Scenic, SD, as in the past 3 years. Almost the entire collection from here came from low-lying
Oreodon beds N of Sheep Mountain. The collection was small, but choice with a special emphasis on
canids. 2 other White River areas were visited during the season, Oelrichs, SD and Slim Buttes in the
NW part of the state. Nothing much was found at Oelrichs but at Slim Buttes we obtained an
extraordinary rodent, a relict of the Paramys line. This specimen was found by Mr. Kenneth Briggs, a
high school student of Baker, MT. He gave the specimen to the museum, for which he was given a set
of collecting tools and some literature. Mr. Junius Bird, of the Department of Anthropology, spent 3
months with the party, spending part of his time prospecting for fossils but largely to explore ancient
cultural stratum discovered by Mr. Thomson in 1937. In Se3pt. The party drove through Billings, in
company of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Cook, to give Mr. Bird the opportunity to review the work of a W. P. A.
group excavating a cultural cave site 7 S. of Billings. On the way back they passed through Ekalaka,
MT and stopped to visit Mr. Walter Peck and his Carter Co. Geological Society Museum in the high school
building. Mr. Peck had found an extraordinary dinosaur skull of the Troodon group, which he had
collected from the nearby Lance Fm. Mr. Peck found the preparation to difficult consented, with the
approval of the Trustees of the Society, to permit the museum to take it aback for preparation and
description. There was the understanding that it would eventually become the property of the museum,
if a colored cast of the skull was returned to Ekalaka along with other material suitable for their
museum. Mr. Thomson returned to the museum on Oct. 27th after shipping 5 boxes of fossils from
Rapid City. From the report of Barnum Brown 1940 In May arrangements were made with the Sinclair
Refining Company for financing an expedition to the Big Bend area of Texas. The fund also was used
in part for freight charges of the large series of fossil sauropod tracks excavated by Mr. R. T. Bird on a
W. P. A. Project, which was started in April (Glen Rose). Dr. Erich M. Schlaikjer, who was to assist in
the early part of the Big Bend work left New York July 30th for Rock Springs, WY, where our truck was
stored and drove to Glen Rose, TX to the track excavation. Brown joined him there on Aug. 8th. They
proceeded to Marathon, TX , making that town headquarters and drove 100-150 miles to the Cretaceous
badland exposures that surround the Chisos Mountains. They examined the specimens that Schlaikjer
had found in 1939 and decided to examine various parts of the formation for the purpose of determining
what area dinosaur remains were best preserved. It soon became evident that associated material
was rare in the entire area and specimens worth excavating were rarer still, although fragments and
incomplete dinosaur bones were found literally by the thousands wherever there were good
exposures. While Dr. Schlaikjer was with them, they covered the Aguja beds E. S. and W of the Chisos
Mountains, taking up several specimens and locating others for excavating later. M
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