16

An Eruption of Research and Astonishing Acquisitions

By May 9, Peterson had set his camp near Adelia, close to where he intended to set up a homestead. Nearby, Wortman had bought the drugstore in Long Pine and would head out to the field once he had that enterprise running smoothly. Hatcher was apparently actively recruiting Peterson to participate on the Antarctic expedition, but Peterson was skeptical, much preferring to work on land than on the ocean. He also doubted he’d get a chance to publish his own research, since Hatcher would have several lieutenants working under him. However, he might well be interested in participating in the voyage if he got a chance to visit India. Hatcher was also recruiting B. A. Bensley, who had just completed a memoir on marsupial evolution and relished the chance to collect marsupial embryos in South America to extend his studies on the origin of the group. Meanwhile, Utterback was struggling to get to Medicine Bow, Wyoming, from Casper through deep snow and mud, plaintively mumbling, “If there was any bottom, I failed to find it.”¹

Back in Pittsburgh, Hatcher reported to Holland on the thirty-first that the Coggeshall brothers were busily preparing the sauropod pelves for exhibition, as well as a “splendid” series of dorsal vertebrae from the Cañon City “morosaur” skeleton. VanKirk had joined Peterson in Nebraska, and they had already packed eight crates of fossils, including five brontothere skulls, apparently all Megacerops, based on the Carnegie catalogue. Gilmore was having a slow start at Sheep Creek, and Utterback was still struggling to get to the Laramie exposures. Douglass was just leaving for southwestern Montana to collect Tertiary mammals, and Hatcher was still laboring on his memoir about Oligocene dogs.²

In the first half of June, Utterback reported finding two promising prospects in Jurassic exposures south of Buffalo, Wyoming. He wrote to see if Hatcher wanted him to work on them or confine himself to Laramie outcrops. A week later, on the twelfth, Utterback wrote to express sympathy and concern for an unspecified illness in Hatcher’s family. He’d decided the Jurassic prospects were too labor-intensive to undertake at that point, so he was focused on prospecting Laramie beds east and north of Trabing near Buffalo, Wyoming. He’d yet to hit any promising prospects, though, and wondered how long he could keep his enthusiasm up, recalling, “Am often reminded of your remarks in regard to the Cañon City quarry, that it is better to work where we know they are than to chase all over the country after them. . . . Shall keep expenses down to the very lowest notch possible and any time you say quit alfalfa is ready to cut.”³

Peterson stayed in touch with Hatcher throughout the latter half of June, in part because he needed Anna to send him his citizenship papers so he could complete the proof on his homestead but also because he was concerned that the Hatchers’ daughter, Alice, was doing “so poorly” and hoped she’d recover soon. Despite his own case of tonsillitis and grippe, he’d discovered an Elotherium skeleton with good limbs and feet, along with about fifteen vertebrae and several ribs. By the twenty-second, he and VanKirk already had eighteen crates packed, even though VanKirk had been bitten by a rattler that he’d tried to catch but was evidently “not any the worse for it and is at work evry [sic] day.” They planned to wrap up their work in the “lower beds” soon, unless they found another locality, and spend the rest of the summer in the “upper beds.” Five days later, Peterson reported they’d found small mammals in the “Titanotherium beds,” including two Hoplophoneus skeletons and a “hippo” skeleton, probably of the hippo-like anthracothere called Bothriodon, based on the entry in the Carnegie catalogue.⁴

Utterback sent his condolences and best wishes for Alice’s recovery on the twenty-eighth before leveling, “Mr. Hatcher after 25 days constant rideing [sic] and prospecting in the Laramie I quit it. When a man realizes that the best part of his season is going and has accomplished nothing he is liable to become desperate.” But he was now upbeat regarding his luck near Kaycee, Wyoming:

On the 25th made quite a find in the Jurassic and moved camp and made preparations for a summers work in this locality. After gathering up a few fragments the rain commenced to pour and at present writing is still at it. If I am not mistaken I have a good thing. Have a large number of caudal vert in position in sight and several limb bones. The bones are in fine condition and in marl and can be worked almost free from matrix. Another skeleton has gone to pieces about 300 ft from the one I shall work upon. While a good portion of that has been washed away I think we will get many good limb bones from that also.

This specimen apparently belonged to Diplodocus (CM 662), as recorded in the Carnegie catalogue. Although he was struggling to find good men to hire for help, he had found a good place to board for $20 per month and vowed to work the prospects until Hatcher arrived or sent other directives. Finally, he suggested that Hatcher send Gilmore, if he wasn’t having success at Sheep Creek, so he could supervise and see the geology at the site. Overall, he proclaimed, “Fine water, plenty of trout and am eating the best of venison three times per day. Bear killed two fine milk cows night before last for a ranchman near here.” A week later, he had sixteen caudals ready to crate and expressed confidence that most of the skeleton was there, since the sacrum, many limb bones, as well as other vertebrae, were in sight. But no locals could be hired at any price, because they were getting $40 to $50 per month for herding sheep. So if Gilmore couldn’t come and Hatcher couldn’t send an assistant, he’d have to cover up the exposed bones, because he couldn’t collect them by himself.⁵

Hatcher was in Hot Springs, South Dakota, by August 13, where Holland wrote him with delight at the various crews’ success in the field. The illustrator Sydney Prentice had come down with a case of “walking typhoid” in Pittsburgh, and Holland was concerned at his insistence to keep working, explaining to Hatcher, “Typhoid is too treacherous a disease to permit anyone to trifle with it.” In early July, Charles R. Eastman of Harvard had been commissioned to purchase as much as $500 worth of fossils for the Carnegie during a trip he was taking to Europe, especially if he could acquire a “study series” from Devonian beds in Scotland or specimens of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, or pterosaurs from Germany’s Solnhofen Limestone. Also, Osborn wrote gleefully with congratulations, while quoting from a USGS agreement: “You are authorized to engage . . . J. B. Hatcher for a monograph on Ceratopsia, and an allotment of $2,100 is made . . . for this purpose. It is understood that Mr. Hatcher agrees to deliver this manuscript and drawings . . . complete within two years, for the sum of $4,200 [including] all traveling and other expenses. . . .”⁶

With Utterback diverted to the Jurassic Morrison Formation, Peterson wrote on the thirtieth to say he’d taken up the quest in the Cretaceous Laramie after VanKirk had gotten into a row with the cook and returned to Pittsburgh in disgrace, leaving a frustrated Peterson without a field assistant. Nonetheless, Peterson had found two prospects near Snyder, Wyoming, one of which he was sure was Triceratops, and he was especially intent on finding a skull of that dinosaur in the Laramie sandstone if time permitted.⁷

Back in the Jurassic, Utterback was wrestling with a large stripping job. Although he could easily blast through the top ten feet of overburden, the last three feet had to be chopped out block by block with a hammer and chisel. On September 20, he thought he’d be done with that in five or six more days, since he’d hired a man to help, but he didn’t think he’d be able to work past October 15, because the ground was already freezing at night. He now had the sacrum with both ischia, another fibula, an astragalus, and a great many vertebrae of all kinds. Both scapulae were ready to box, and he hoped to garner the greater portion of the skeleton if expense wasn’t too great, about which he warned Hatcher, “Have let you down light for the past month but have your smelling salts convenient when next comes in.” By October 1, both his hired men had quit to cut timber, but he’d managed to collect two cervicals, one caudal, and one dorsal, with a very fine femur and a humerus underway, along with several other bones in sight. He’d need to close camp soon and wanted Hatcher’s advice as to whether he should store the outfit there for working the site next season or bring the equipment with him.⁸

Hatcher received a rare note from Andrew Carnegie, who wrote from Skibo Castle in Scotland on October 2. Hatcher had sent Carnegie a copy of his Diplodocus memoir with the illustrated restoration. Carnegie excitedly informed him, “The King was attracted to the Diplodocus when here. He wants one for British Museum badly.” Carnegie indicated the king was “on your track now for duplicates,” so perhaps Hatcher could call upon him if Hatcher came for a visit. Hatcher, having returned to Pittsburgh by mid-September, wrote Osborn to exult in Utterback’s discovery of what he hoped would be “a complete skeleton of one of the Sauropoda,” which turned out to be a Diplodocus (CM 662). He had never seen “such fine bones well preserved & not at all crushed.” Hatcher also proclaimed he was ready to begin on the Ceratopsia monograph, putting in six hours a day, for 210 days per year, at $10 per day from then on. By October 1, although “making substantial progress,” Hatcher realized the monograph would “develop into a considerable undertaking, perhaps more than I had anticipated,” but he pledged to give it his best effort and complete it within the allotted time. Osborn expressed his pleasure with the plan and progress on October 7. By mid-October, Hatcher realized that standardizing the planned monographs for the Ceratopsia, Sauropoda, and Stegosauria that he, Osborn, and Lucas were writing would require a coordinated classification system for the Dinosauria, which Hatcher didn’t feel “competent” to provide. Osborn agreed and volunteered to draft up a classification scheme revised from Marsh’s earlier one, which Hatcher and Lucas could critique. Hatcher continued to update Osborn on his progress throughout the rest of the year. But not surprisingly given their former fracases, when Osborn published a note in Science entitled “New Vertebrates of the Mid-Cretaceous,” Hatcher took exception to Osborn’s statement that “the true Judith River beds certainly overlie the Ft. Pierre [beds].” Hatcher’s geologic observations in the region made him uncertain of the true stratigraphic relationships, and he told Osborn he would rebut Osborn’s claim in Science. Accurately resolving the issue would require further geologic reconnaissance, which would eventually be done with Osborn’s support in conjunction with the USGS geologist T. W. Stanton during 1903.⁹

By October 7, Utterback had worked most bones out of the rock, including two cervicals and numerous foot bones. He had another radius and ulna ready to extract, but he would have to leave more vertebrae in the ground. He could haul the crates to Buffalo, Wyoming, from which he’d need to pay $20 per ton to have them hauled to the railroad at Clearmont, because parts of the road were too steep for his single team to handle. He’d assist in loading the crates to ensure their safety. A couple of days later, he expected to have the crates at Clearmont on the twenty-third and estimated that it would take two men six weeks or two months to collect the rest of the skeleton the following season. In mid-October, both Peterson and Utterback were wrestling their treasures onto the rails, but Utterback’s boxcar was delayed, “owing to great rush of stock of all kinds to eastern markets the B and M are having more than they can handle. There [are] 2,000 cars of dead freight between Edgemont and Billings.” He’d been trying to locate the car with his crates for three days since he arrived in Adelia from Clearmont, leading him to sarcastically state, “As Adelia is a very pleasant place especially on windy days you can easily imagine the good time am having.”¹⁰

For all intents and purposes, Hatcher spent relatively scant time in the field during 1902, a supposition that is seemingly confirmed by the fact that the Carnegie specimen catalogue lists no fossils collected by him that year. But his crew certainly came through. Peterson recorded one specimen of the sauropod dinosaur Camarasaurus from the 150-million-year-old beds of the Morrison Formation, and seven mammals from the 37- to 34-million-year-old strata of the Chadron Formation, including the small “bear dog” Brachyrhyncocyon; brontothere beheamoths “Brontops” and “Menodus,” both now called Megacerops; the hippo-like anthracothere Bothriodon; and the rhino Trigonias. Peterson also contributed one egg and 117 mammal fossils from the 34- to 32-million-year-old rock layers of the Brule Formation, including the opossum-like Peratherium; the weasel-like insectivorous Letptictis; the rodents Paradjidaumo and Eumys; the dogs Protemnocyon and Hesperocyon; the “bear dog” Daphoenus; the saber-toothed carnivores Hoplophoneus and Dinictis; the horse Mesohippus; the rhinos “Caeonpus,” now called Subhyracodon, and Hyracodon; the “terror pig” Archaeotherium; the camel Poebrotherium; the oreodont Merycoidodon; the deer- and chevrotain-like Leptomeryx, Hypertargulus, and Hypisodus. Peterson collected six oreodont specimens of Phenacocoelus, Mesoreodon, and Promerycochoerus from the 30- to 19-million-year-old beds of Upper Monroe Creek Formation, as well as two other mammal fossils of the mountain beaver Allops and the oreodont Merychyus with incomplete field data.

Gilmore gathered up an impressive forty-six dinosaur specimens of the sauropods Camarasaurus, Apatosaurus, and Diplodocus, the armored Stegosaurus and the carnivorous Allosaurus, as well as a specimen of the porpoise-like ichthyosaur Opthalmosaurus from the Morrison Formation, while Utterback is credited with one ichthyosaur specimen of Opthalmosaurus and one specimen of the sauropod Diplodocus.

Douglass’s collection dominated the season’s tally, with one specimen of the ostrich-like dinosaur Ornithomimus and one specimen of the soft-shelled turtle Trionyx from the 84- to 72-million-year-old “Belly River” Formation. Douglass also gleaned 22 mammal specimens of the rodents Ischyromys and Cylindrodon, the rabbit Palaeolagus, the brontothere “Menodus,” now called Megacerops; the horse Mesohippus; the tapir Colodon; the oreodont Bathygenys; and the deer-like Leptomeryx from the 37- to 34-million-year-old Chadron, Totson, and Renova Formations; four specimen of Palaeolagus, Mesohippus, and the oreodont Leptauchenia from the Brule Formation; one fossil of the dog Mesocyon from the 30- to 19-million-year-old beds of the John Day Formation; and one fossil of the horse Merychippus from an unnamed 19- to 16-million-year-old formation. But Douglass dug out an impressive 90 mammals and two tortoises from the 16- to 12.5-million-year-old strata of the Madison Valley, Deep River, and Sixmile Formations, such as the opossum-like marsupial Peratherium; the rabbits Palaeolagus and Alphalagus; the six-inch-long, mouse-like rodent Eumys; the squirrel Palaearctomys; the beaver Palaeocastor, the horned, beaver-like rodent Mylagaulus; the elephant-like mastodon Mammut, the fox-sized dog Hesperocyon; the “bear dog” Daphoenus; the three-tonned rhino Aphelops; the grazing horses Merychippus and Protohippus; the oreodonts Promerycochoerus, Eporeodon, Mesoreodon, Cyclopedius, and Merycoides; the deer-like Leptomeryx; the camel Procamelus; the antelope-like Merycodus; and the tortoises Testudo and Stylemys. Finally, Douglass collected five more mammal specimens of the mastodon Mammut, the rodent Paradjidaumo, the horse Protohippus, and the oreodont Eporeodon with incomplete field data. In sum, Hatcher’s crew contributed 408 new specimens to the Carnegie collection.

In part, Hatcher had kept busy by canvassing fossil dealers and publishers in Europe for potential specimens and back-issue publications to purchase for the Carnegie’s collection and library. In addition, his narrative of the Patagonian expeditions and study of Oligocene “canids” had come out, in which he assigned two of Peterson’s specimens (CM 492 & 553) to Daphoenus felinus, and another to “Daphoenus dodgei” (CM 573), which is now interpreted to be a species of Brachyrhynchocyon. Hatcher also created new genera and species for two others—“Proamphicyon nebrascensis” (CM 491), which is now assigned to Daphoenus vetus (Hunt 2004), and “Protemnocyon inflatus” (CM 552), which is now known as Daphoenus hartshornianus (Hunt 1996). Today, these animals are not classified with true canids but rather to another group of carnivorans informally called “bear dogs,” which are viewed as evolutionary relatives of true dogs. Whereas “bear dogs” walked flat-footed, or in a platigrade manner, with all the bones of their feet touching the ground, true dogs walk up on their fingers and toes in a digitigrade mode. In all, the eight papers published in 1902 varied in subject mater from the mount of “Titanotherium” to the structure of the hand in Brontosaurus to duckbills and the musk ox.¹¹

Through November and December, Hatcher was also in touch with Charles Beecher at Yale, since he’d sent VanKirk there apparently to prepare a Triceratops skull for his monograph. Beecher reported that although VanKirk worked diligently, Hatcher probably wouldn’t be satisfied, since the assistant wasn’t very experienced in Triceratops preparation. Beecher, meanwhile, had pushed an initiative through the Peabody’s trustees that Hatcher had proposed—to hire another man to work on preparing ceratopsian skeletons, with the costs being split evenly between the Peabody and the Carnegie.¹²

No doubt pining for a period in the field, on February 11, Hatcher was plotting with his old acquaintance, T. W. Stanton of the USGS, to travel to the Judith region for a couple of months in the summer of 1903. That same month, he was also receiving accolades for his recent publications, including ones from Lucas from the Smithsonian Institution and especially John C. Merriam from the University of California at Berkeley:

Your letter and the paper on the Oligocene Canidae . . . is a fine piece of work. It is much larger and more elaborate than I supposed when we were talking over the specimens. . . . I am looking forward to having a good time with your Patagonian Narrative and Geography which I know will furnish me with very good reading for some time.¹³

A long letter from Williston arrived in Hatcher’s box on the twenty-fifth, in which Williston tried to soothe Hatcher’s feelings about Riggs, who had apparently tried to pilfer Hatcher’s illustrator, Sydney Prentice. No doubt still seething about Riggs’s attempt to hire away Gilmore the previous year, Hatcher was not amused. Williston, who had been Riggs’s professor at Kansas, was now in Chicago, where Riggs was also based. Williston reassured Hatcher that Riggs surely could not have “intended anything unfriendly” and probably wrote at the suggestion of the Field’s director, who was a personal friend of Prentice’s. Williston reminded Hatcher that competent illustrators were in short supply, and Williston had just had to reject some work done by a local artist there. In any event, Williston wrote, “I assure you that if ever I should have a proposition to make to one of your assistants that you will hear of it first, and I am sure that you will do the same.” Still unsatisfied with his own position, Williston, a gifted fellow refugee from Marsh and an academic itinerant like Hatcher, confided:

I may say (privately) that I suppose my relations with the museum will terminate soon. It was hoped that some effective combination could be made between the Museum and University for mutual advantage, but I have no expectation that anything will result in the immediate future. I expect to begin collecting in the Cretaceous for the University the coming summer.

And, I am rather glad of it. Until vertebrate paleontology is put on an independent footing in the museum it will be vain to expect much advancement. . . .

The fields that I wish particularly to work in are the Permian and the Marine Cretaceous. Of course I must get more or less Tertiary material for instruction purposes, but the strength of my department I intend to put in on the early reptiles and amphibians.¹⁴

Beecher indicated on March 4 that another preparator had failed to meet standards for working on the Triceratops skull that Hatcher needed cleaned at Yale. Like good illustrators, competent preparators were apparently also few and far between at the time, and Beecher suggested that perhaps Marsh’s old technician Hugh Gibb would be able to lend a hand by July. But Beecher presented a scheme on the seventeenth by which Gibb and another staff preparator at Yale could use their time off to work on ceratopsians, if Hatcher had funding to foot the bill at 50 cents per hour, with Yale putting in a similar amount.¹⁵

Better news came from Stanton on the fifth in that their planned trip to the Judith region would be part of the budget submission for the USGS, and Osborn had agreed to support it. By the sixteenth, Stanton wrote to say he was confident that the request would be approved for two months in the field beginning June 1. One imperative was to purchase the tickets soon so that the charges would go against the current budget. Given Hatcher’s experience in outfitting expeditions in the region, Stanton preferred to have Hatcher make the arrangements with someone in Havre, Montana. They hoped to visit Lambe’s ceratopsian localities in Alberta. Stanton wondered if they’d have trouble crossing the border and hoped Lambe would help out to avoid the extra cost of duties.¹⁶

Word was getting out about the Carnegie’s intent to provide the British Museum with a mounted cast of their Diplodocus. On the twenty-seventh, Holland received a request from the Tribune to provide information and imagery that they could use for a piece in their illustrated supplement, with costs to be covered by the paper.¹⁷

Hatcher and Stanton continued to tussle with the finances and budgetary procedures for their Judith trip throughout April and early May. Once they saw the pertinent stratigraphy and fossil sites in Montana and Alberta, they planned to split up, with Stanton going on to examine invertebrate fossil sites in Idaho and Utah. By May 3, Hatcher had struck a deal for the field outfit with a supplier in Havre for $300. Hatcher also contacted Lambe, who, on May 14, thanked Hatcher for the copy of his “splendid” memoir on Oligocene dogs and informed him that he’d try to join them for a while on the Canadian leg of their trip, in addition to providing from his papers whatever figures and illustrations he could for Hatcher’s monograph on the Ceratopsia. Meanwhile, Stanton had made notes from pertinent Canadian Survey reports and planned to take copies of the associated maps.¹⁸

At the same time, Holland was helping to arrange transportation for Douglass back to Montana for his field season. Peterson remained in Pittsburgh during the 1903 field season, since there was a burgeoning backlog of specimens to prepare and field funds were scarce. Utterback wrote Hatcher from Mayoworth, Wyoming, on May 19 that he’d begun stripping overburden on the quarry he’d discovered the previous year. But he was a bit concerned that Riggs was conducting surveillance to figure out the exact location of Utterback’s quarry by writing a friend of his in Buffalo, Wyoming. Utterback didn’t object to having other crews nearby, but there were exposures just south of his quarry that he wanted to prospect because he was aware of many finds made there. He asked Hatcher to conduct some counterintelligence when he passed through Chicago. On the twenty-sixth, Hatcher confirmed he’d check in at the Field Museum in Chicago to find out what Riggs was up to and advised Utterback to visit the exposures south of the quarry as soon as possible, then mark any significant finds with posters claiming them for Utterback and the Carnegie.¹⁹

Stanton and Hatcher set up an agreement on May 23 regarding the distribution of fossils they would find that stipulated that the first set of fossils, including any types for new species, would belong to the USGS, since it was the primary funder. However, Hatcher and Stanton would choose a set of duplicates for the Carnegie’s collection. Before departing, Hatcher directed Peterson to continue working on the camel mount of Oxydactylus so it would be ready for Founder’s Day, while VanKirk would continue preparation of the saber-tooths, Hoplophoneus and Dinictis, as well as the horse, Mesohippus, until adequate material was developed for mounting a skeleton of each. Then Hatcher wrote a memo to Holland to confirm that he’d be gone with Stanton for the months of June and July to collect and conduct geologic reconnaissance in Montana and Alberta, with the collections split as previously described. Then he’d join Utterback’s operation, prospect in the Laramie near Lusk, and evaluate a brontothere prospect found two years earlier east of the Black Hills in South Dakota before returning by September 1.²⁰

Utterback reported fair returns on June 1, but Quarry A was about worked out after producing six dorsals, ten caudals, both sternal bones, along with numerous foot bones, spines, and chevrons. He anticipated that Quarry B would also produce some very fine bones, and several were in sight. By the fourth, Utterback had many unspecified bones out of B with more in sight, all in all including three ischia, two pubes, about fifteen vertebrae of different kinds, as well as ribs.²¹

About a week after Hatcher hit the road, Holland wrote to say he intended to purchase the Bayet collection through C. R. Eastman of Harvard for 100,000 francs. He informed Hatcher that to keep Eastman in “good spirits” during the negotiations to come, he hoped Hatcher would be accommodating by letting Eastman, who was an ichthyologist and paleontologist, study the fish in the collection. By the tenth, Holland heard that Baron de Bayet had accepted his offer, as long as the Belgian mollusks and plants were excluded from the purchase, along with the cases that currently housed the collection. The Carnegie would be responsible for packing and shipping the collection, including the costs. Holland was desirous of acquiring the whole collection and was prepared to offer another $500, equaling 2,500 francs, to get it, but the baron was insisting that it would need to be packed and shipped in short order because he was paying rent on the house in which it was stored. Apparently, Eastman had told Holland that Hatcher had said it would be fine for him to pack up and study the collection for a year while he was in Europe; Eastman had offered to take a leave from Harvard and temporarily join the Carnegie staff to carry out the work. But Holland was skeptical that Hatcher had made such an agreement, since, during their last conversation before he left, Hatcher had expressed his disapproval for such an arrangement.²²

In any event, Holland didn’t wish to pay Eastman for a year given all the other expenses involved. On the twelfth, Holland telegraphed Hatcher to ask if he approved of Eastman studying and packing up the collection in Europe. Four days later, Eastman telegraphed Hatcher to say that Holland approved of his sailing for Brussels as soon as Hatcher approved.²³

Hatcher finally returned to Havre from the Canadian leg of his excursion with Stanton by the twenty-second. He responded to Holland that he was greatly pleased that Mr. Carnegie had provided the funding to purchase the Bayet collection. He added:

I do not care how we get it just so we do get it. If you are convinced that Dr. Eastman will look out for our interests in this matter to the best possible advantage, I am quite satisfied. . . . Eastman . . . is not a close personal acquaintance of mine. I should feel much better if you or I could go over and make an invoice of the material with Eastman, who is a good paleontologist . . . but has had almost no experience in the collecting and handling of material.

The only promise I made him was . . . he should have the privilege of working up the fishes, but without any salary in case he did so, the results to be published in the publications of our Museum. I made no promise that . . . he should be sent to Brussels. . . . He told me that he was returning to Europe . . . and . . . he would be glad to give any assistance possible in expediting matters and in identifying material.

Hatcher reiterated his demand that a thorough list of all the specimens be made and suggested Holland pay rent for the place where it was stored in order to provide the time to do so. As the curator responsible, Hatcher offered to leave immediately to go over and handle the matter himself if Holland wanted. But Holland decided to sail for Europe on July 8 and take Eastman with him in order to make the inventory, verify the field collection data to the degree possible, and pack the material. This would allow Holland to wrap up business with the baron for about two weeks before the baron left the city. He indicated that Hatcher might need to come over later. It seems Holland was especially keen that Hatcher get to the Judith region so he could collect moths and butterflies, for, “from the standpoint of the lepidopterist [the Judith was] almost a terra incognita.”²⁴

At the end of June, Utterback was still uncovering numerous good bones in Quarry B and thought he had two good skeletons. Although he couldn’t identify them with certainty, he indicated one resembled Marsh’s description of Stegosaurus. To help Hatcher visualize his progress, he provided a sketch of his quarries, which revealed where he’d taken out over one hundred bones from just ten square feet, making “the bones show up so thick as to be almost impossible to work.” According to listings in the Carnegie catalogue, Utterback’s haul from Quarry B included specimens of Diplodocus, Camrasaurus, Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, and possibly Haplocanthosaurus. Finding competent help still stymied him. “Have a good man with team or pick and shovel however cares no more for bones than a hog does for an acorn with a hole in it.” Thus, he still hadn’t prospected the exposures to the south.²⁵

When Hatcher wrote on July 11, he seemed pleased that Holland was going to Brussels and requested that Holland make sure Eastman provided labels for all the presently unlabeled specimens and packed them securely. He was also pleased that his Judith trip had confirmed his hypothesis about where the Judith beds fit in the stratigraphic sequence, as opposed to the ideas held by Osborn, Williston, and Stanton. The key question involved whether the beds of the Judith River Formation lay lower in the stratigraphic sequence of rock layers (and were, therefore, older) than the rock layers of the Laramie or Lance and Hell Creek Formations, or whether the reverse was true. Osborn, Williston, and Stanton believed the Judith beds were younger than those of the Lance and Hell Creek, but Hatcher suspected the opposite. By the end of their expedition to Montana and Alberta, Stanton had conceded the point to Hatcher and coauthored a paper to Science with Hatcher saying so, leading Hatcher to crow: “If some of our closet geologists would spend nineteen years almost constantly in the field, as I did, they would not presume to speak with such absolute authority on subjects of which they know nothing.”²⁶

By the end of July, Holland and Eastman had started slowly packing the Bayet collection, which filled eight to ten rooms and included numerous invertebrates, especially ammonites, thirteen to fourteen Solnhofen pterosaurs, an Eocene falcon, Solnhofen insects and crustaceans, mosasaurs, and several new fish. It would take two hundred crates to ship it all.²⁷

Utterback reported that he’d packed twenty-two crates of bones by July 28. Barnum Brown of the AMNH had visited and spent a day prospecting before leaving for the Hell Creek region of Montana. Gilmore had written to say he’d discovered nothing significant. A few days later, Utterback had decided to close his quarry by August 10 and prospect the exposures to the south unless Hatcher had other ideas.²⁸

Carnegie chimed in to Holland on August 4, proclaiming that as a result of their successes, Holland and Hatcher must be “special pets of Providence,” although he couldn’t understand exactly why. He was pleased that work on the duplicate of Diplodocus was initiated, because “I wish this for his Majesty—I do hope that Skull is coming out perfect.” He marveled at what famous men Holland and Hatcher were becoming. For his part, Carnegie was considering forging a cottage industry for Diplodocus casts: “I think better make more than one cast of Diplodocus—If I visit all the Crowned Heads could send one to each of their National Museums,” including the king of Belgium, the emperor of Germany, Russia, and Queen Wilhelmina, all of whom had sent messages inviting him to visit.²⁹

Utterback was still pounding away in Quarry B on the sixth and getting more bones of the supposed stegosaur, of which he thought he’d recover a “good part.” But by the tenth, he’d closed the quarry and headed for the Musselshell region of Montana as Hatcher had directed.³⁰

Hatcher, having read Holland’s accounts of his opulent encounters with European royalty, wrote on August 13:

. . . you have certainly been leading a very strenuous life of late. Lionized by the king of the Belgians & wined & dined by Barons & Baronesses is certainly too much for a retired minister, & such a “notorious” king as Leopold too. Really my dear Dr. Holland I have fears that you will return to us in a battered condition. . . . Can you not send me a case of some of that wine you have been drinking to replace some of this vile alkali water I am living on. Perhaps if you could I would get over this case of “back-door-trots” I have had the past week.

He was delighted to hear about the “gems” in the Bayet collection, which would vault the Carnegie to the top of American museums in terms of collections of European vertebrates. But Hatcher wanted more and implored Holland to also solicit Carnegie to purchase the Filhol collection in Paris, which contained many type specimens and would be of great value in correlating American and European rock units, a problem that had “as yet never been properly attempted.” Besides, it would only cost $2,000 or about $55,000 today. Hatcher was at Musselshell, Montana, where he’d found bones while traveling with Stanton, and now had several crates packed. He reported that all the crews were having good success, and he planned to return to Pittsburgh around the twentieth.³¹

When Hatcher showed up at the museum, he was no longer pleased with Holland, who had let Eastman take the falcon fossil to England with him to study and describe. Holland hurriedly informed Eastman on the thirty-first not to describe or name it, even though Eastman had pledged to name it after Holland. Holland elaborated, Hatcher “says that for me to have allowed you to take the bird, without consulting him, was to trench upon his ‘sovereign rights’ as Curator of Paleontology. . . . The man is very jealous of his prerogatives & of his supposed dignities.” Meanwhile Eastman wrote to say he’d studied Agassiz’s fossil fish types, and those in the Bayet collection were much better. He’d also found three Oligocene bird fossils from Armissan near Narbonne, but only one genus named “Taoperdix” had been described from there. One Bayet specimen, which was remarkably complete except for part of the skull, seemed to be different. Regarding the Filhol collection, the French wanted it but couldn’t afford it, while the British had offered 37,500 francs and were begging the Americans not to compete.³²

In early September, Utterback finished collecting the duckbill bones Hatcher had found near Willow Creek, Montana, and discovered a tibia, a small humerus, three metatarsals, one metacarpal, two caudals, two ribs, and some chevrons. The man hired to haul the crates “went on a high old lonesome in Billings and just returned.”³³

Hatcher had other international business to catch up on. He negotiated an exchange with F. Baron Nopcsa and Viktor Uhlig of Vienna in early September, through which Hatcher would send a pelvis and femur of an ornithopod dinosaur, while Vienna would make casts of some bones of “Struthiosaurus.” Hatcher had also received a letter from his old nemesis Florentino Ameghino, to which he responded on September 3:

Throughout the entire discussion you have entirely misinterpreted what I have said concerning the Pyrotherium beds. If you will take the trouble to look at my paper you will see that I place the Pyrotherium beds in the Cretaceous, and that I did so on your authority, I did not then nor do I now believe that the beds from which your brother Charles collected the mammalian fauna referred to, the Pyrotherium beds are Cretaceous, and I suggested that some of them might be more recent than the Santa Cruzian. I did not then nor never have placed the Pyrotherium beds above the Santa Cruzian, I did believe and still believe that certain of the fossils described as from the Pyrotherium beds might be more recent than Santa Cruzian.

Hatcher also disputed Ameghino’s interpretation of the “Patagonian” Formation as representing a distinct horizon and Ameghino’s accusation that Hatcher had mixed up the fossils he collected there. He countered,

Do you think that it is possible for me to have intruded the fossils into a large block of matrix which I shipped home from the mouth of the Santa Cruz River in so skillful a manner that this fraud would not have been detected by Dr. Ortmann, Professor Pillsbury, Professor Scott, Professor Osborn, Dr. Dall, or any one of the many other paleontologists who have had access to this material? Yet in each of these blocks of matrix in every instance they were finding mingled together fossils which according to you were characteristic of all three of the horizons which you claim to be able to distinguish.

Hatcher went on to defend the care he took to collect and curate the specimens he’d collected, and pledged to publish a fuller account in papers to come. He urged that they both provide detailed descriptions, photos, and geologic sections of the localities where they collected so anyone interested could visit them and see the relationships for themselves. He felt no one had expressed more admiration for Ameghino’s work than he had, and “to differ in our views and to publish those differences should never be regarded as an unfriendly act, and all criticisms and replies should, I think, be couched in friendly words.”³⁴

On the fourth, Hatcher wrote Osborn that he and Prentice would soon visit New Haven and New York to describe and illustrate specimens for the Ceratopsia volume. He also wrote Lambe to express his regret that he couldn’t join Stanton and himself in their examination of the stratigraphy of the Belly River and Judith River beds. But Hatcher would be pleased to receive the marked-up copy of Lambe’s memoir on horned dinosaurs from Canada, which would help Hatcher insert the catalogue numbers of the specimens in his Ceratopsia volume. Hatcher also expressed appreciation for Lambe’s offer to loan him the original zinc blocks and ink drawings for Lambe’s figures and plates. Then Hatcher asked to borrow the type of the bony-helmeted pachycephalosaur called Stegoceras validus, because he wanted to compare it with some fossils he’d collected earlier in the summer.³⁵

Closer to home, Hatcher tried to check in with Gilmore, Utterback, and Douglass on the fourth. He had not heard from Gilmore in a month and was curious about his success. He also inquired about what Gilmore would need in terms of railway passes to Pittsburgh. He directed Utterback to revisit the site where they’d collected parts of “the curious armored dinosaurs”; shovel all the loose dirt down to bedrock to see if a skeleton lay buried underneath; and pick through the debris for fragments. He added, “This is an extremely interesting and important discovery and do not be afraid of spending too much time in working over the locality. A fragment or two of the skull might be of more value than the entire cost of a month’s work.” As identified in the Carnegie catalogue, this specimen did not turn out to be a dinosaur but rather an enormous, thirty-foot-long alligator named Deinosuchus (CM 963).³⁶

Once finished, Utterback was to prospect the badlands about three miles to the west, then move on to prospect at Ragged Rocks about eight to ten miles east, and finally examine the exposures about ten miles north of his camp. Everything from these localities would be new to the Carnegie collections, and the fauna was poorly known in general. At the end of the season, Utterback was to haul all the crates from Hatcher’s earlier collections, as well as Utterback’s own, to Billings, where they’d be combined with Douglass’s crates of Tertiary fossils for shipment back to Pittsburgh. Hatcher directed Douglass to work until October 1, when the available field funds would be expended, and return to Pittsburgh, where plenty of work awaited.³⁷

In other business in early September, Hatcher inquired if E. H. Sellards might be interested in joining the Carnegie staff at least for the summer as a collection manager for the invertebrate fossils, and Sellards responded on the thirteenth that he’d accept any terms Hatcher was able to arrange. However, Holland denied the request. Hatcher also told G. P. Merrill of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History that it might be possible for Gilmore to visit in order to prepare their Torosaurus skull if Merrill could contribute $50 per month toward Gilmore’s salary. He also wrote M. S. Farr at Princeton to say he’d love to receive a set of the Patagonian reports published to that point, but Farr should check with Scott first, because “from the manner in which Professor Scott has acted toward me in these and all other matters I am not sure that he would sanction your sending me a set of the reports.” In fact, Scott was next on Hatcher’s correspondence list, with Hatcher writing to inquire whether Scott ever intended to repay him the $75 Hatcher had paid Peterson for work at Princeton after his return from Patagonia in 1899. Hatcher ended rather sarcastically with, “I thank you very kindly for Part 1, of your Report on the Mammalia of the Santa Cruz beds. Save for my own report this is the first of any of the reports of these expeditions that I have had the pleasure of receiving.” Scott responded on the ninth that he’d send at least half of the payment due in short order and expressed surprise that Hatcher hadn’t received copies of the reports that had been published, since he had directed his staff to send them, before promising to “attend to the matter.” Mollified, Hatcher accepted Scott’s assurances.³⁸

Then it was time to badger Eastman a bit by insisting that he send whatever specimens he had in Paris to the Carnegie so they could be catalogued before Eastman published on them. Hatcher also requested a complete list of the specimens Eastman had retained with an explanation of his progress in studying them. Finally, Hatcher inquired about what had become of the $100 Hatcher had given him to purchase small fossil collections in Europe, since “. . . having never received any of these small and interesting collections nor any report from you as to what you had done with them . . . I should like you to furnish me with a list of these collections and their contents and . . . a statement as to what you have done with the money entrusted to you.”³⁹

Hatcher finally heard from Gilmore by the seventh and seemed pleased with his “continued success” as well as the news that his new daughter was healthy. The same was true for Utterback’s report of success on the ninth. Douglass checked in on the twelfth to respond that he’d try to quit on October 1, but he might not be finished collecting everything he’d located. He’d had good success, and there were good prospects for more in the future. Hatcher wrote again on the eighteenth to insist Douglass close operations by October 1. Gilmore was on his way back and provided an account of his discoveries near Winona, Kansas, on the 13th: “Last week I found a few fragments of a Plesiosaur, evidently a large one. The end of one limb bone which I take to be the humerus, measures 10 in. across the distal end. Though we searched diligently nothing more could be found. Another disarticulated skull of Clidastes with some scattering vertebrae was the most important mosasaur find.” Their conversation continued on the eighteenth, with Hatcher trying to determine the rail passes that would be needed for Gilmore’s trip to Pittsburgh.⁴⁰

Beginning on the seventh, Hatcher initiated a debate with O. P. Hay of the AMNH, hectoring him for publishing his thoughts “On Some Recent Literature Bearing on the Laramie Formation” before learning of the results of Hatcher’s trip with Stanton, since Hay and Hatcher had corresponded about the issue before the trip:

Since Dr. Stanton, my at one time strongest opponent on this question now thoroughly agrees with me as you will see by a recent note in “Science,” that the Judith River beds are not Laramie and do not overlie the Pierre, you will perhaps be glad to withdraw the statement made on page 116, “that Hatcher’s statement avails nothing against the positive observations of many other geologists.”

Please accept my sincere sympathy for you in your present predicament, until such time as I may personally see you in New York, when we will lunch together and be mutually reconciled.

But Hay gamely replied on the ninth, “I am in receipt of your nervy letter of the 7th. Before replying allow me to ask a question. Do you intend to discuss my paper in any publication or are we to settle our differences privately? . . . Don’t imagine that I am kicking myself. ‘There are other hearts that may ache.’” Hatcher quickly followed up on the eleventh, saying he hoped Hay hadn’t taken his jibes too seriously, because they were “not written in a spirit of bravado, but rather of playfulness.” Then Hatcher proceeded to invite Hay to lunch as soon as Hatcher made it to New York. Ending the counterpunching, Hay wrote to say he feared Hatcher had taken his notes too seriously as well, quipping, “Don’t think anyone came out of that scrimmage without some disfiguration.” More to the point, he asked Hatcher what differences distinguished the Laramie and Judith River faunas.⁴¹

Next, Hatcher wrote Lucas of the Smithsonian on the ninth to inquire about what they paid Peter Giordani for sculpting their model of Stegosaurus, because Hatcher wanted him to model some missing bones of the Carnegie’s Diplodocus. Lucas informed him that Giordani made $3.50 per day and, although not the best modeler, was very pleasant and reliable.⁴²

Then on the eleventh, Hatcher sought to settle matters with Eastman, expressing delight regarding the quality of the Solnhofen and Monte Bolca fishes, as well as with Eastman’s progress on studying them. He was surprised to hear of the bird fossils but dutifully promised to have the fifty crates of Bayet material, including the ones Eastman had wanted to study, brought promptly to the museum for cataloguing. He hoped to see Eastman soon in order to “arrive at some definite understanding concerning some questions about which there would seem to be some difference of opinion.”⁴³

Indeed, Eastman wrote the same day to register his “regret that any misapprehension should have arisen on account of my having taken with me a fossil fowl to Paris in addition to a select lot of fishes.” He explained that no one, including the baron, had been aware of the bird fossils, so he’d taken the supposed falcon to Paris to compare it with other known avian fossils. But he had no intention of publishing on it because he understood from both Holland and Hatcher that a volume on the collection would be published and he didn’t want to upstage what would be a most noteworthy work. In all, he acknowledged his profound appreciation for the opportunity to study the collection’s fish, which would afford the scientific community with “much new information.”⁴⁴

In what must have been a blow to Hatcher, Hatcher notified W. J. McGee of the International Geological Congress on September 14 about “the results of the consultation last week with Dr. Holland and myself relating to the expedition to Patagonia. At a meeting of the Board of the Museum Committee and of the Board of Trustees, . . . it seemed to be the sense of the opinion of the trustees that they would rather not engage in this undertaking.” Hatcher’s bad day continued as documented in a letter to Lambe: “The types . . . of your Stegoceras validus . . . have been received, and I have to acknowledge in this connection a serious blunder on my part. What I had in mind in writing you was not Stegoceras validus at all, but Stereocephalus tutus. I was writing entirely from memory and had, for the time being, confused these two genera. . . .” Stegoceras is a small, dome-headed or bony-helmeted pachycephalosaur, whereas Lambe indicated that the fossils of the armored ankylosaur, then called “Stereocephalus,” were too large to send. But Hatcher could see them when he came up.⁴⁵

On the fifteenth, Utterback and his assistant Albert C. Silberling reported having four crates of very good bones from the spring Hatcher had directed he prospect, making almost 4,000 pounds between Hatcher’s and his own haul around Musselshell. But the freighter, known well for his dishonesty, wanted to bill Utterback for 5,700 pounds. To resolve the issue, Utterback got the freighting company to agree not to settle the bill until the true weight was determined when the crates were loaded on the railcar. By the twentieth, Utterback had found three more plates and several other fragments at the site of Hatcher’s supposed armored dinosaur, along with parts of the jaw or skull showing the roots of some teeth. That triggered opening a quarry twenty feet long and ten feet wide, from which they extracted:

. . . 16 more complete plates 2 dorsal vert, 1 complete rib and parts of others. Also another bone that has put both Mr S. and myself as well as O.C. Marsh’s Dinosaurs of America up a stump. . . . Of the 19 plates running in size from a twenty five cent piece up there is no two the same. If anything the dorsal vert are more of a puzzle than the plates as they are so entirely different from anything I ever saw. . . . [He wished he could identify the beast, but] “As our pleasures in this world are largely built upon hopes and expectations you will have to await the coming of the bones themselves.⁴⁶

Back east, a perplexing problem arose with Osborn, who wrote on the fifteenth to say he was looking forward to Hatcher and Prentice visiting so they could discuss the Judith and Laramie work. He would also graciously make space for Prentice to draw the ceratopsians Hatcher needed and offer his advice when Hatcher wasn’t there. But on the sixteenth, Beecher of Yale wrote to say Osborn’s student Richard S. Lull had shown up at the Peabody “requesting the privilege of ‘examining’ your Triceratops skulls in connection ‘with a description of our skulls.’ I told him that we were under contract with you on the Triceratops material and that I could not allow him to see any of the material you had in hand.” In lieu, Beecher directed him to the exhibits, where a skull of “T. prosus” was on view, but Lull left in disappointment after about fifteen minutes. Beecher sought Hatcher’s advice, especially since Osborn was clearly “Vertebrate Paleontologist of the U.S.G.S. and therefore in a way in charge of all the vertebrate work, but this request to-day did not seem to me to be quite right and I therefore declined to grant it.” Hatcher responded on the eighteenth with surprise that Osborn would have Lull working on ceratopsians when he’d asked Hatcher to write the official monograph and was gobsmacked that Osborn hadn’t at least let him know of Lull’s intentions. Hatcher would come to New Haven shortly and discuss it all but agreed with Beecher’s decision, explaining:

As you know, I have already expended something over $500 in the payment of salaries of preparators to work on the skulls at New Haven. It does not appear to me that it would be right, in view of this fact and of the additional fact that I have already been engaged for more than a year in work upon this group, to allow others to have access to the material at New Haven for purposes of study and description. You can readily see that by such a course the results of my work during the past year and more, might very easily be anticipated by Professor Lull, and that observations made independently by me at considerable expense and trouble would be likely to be gained by him.

But Osborn attempted to butt in again later in September, when Beecher received another request for Osborn’s preparator Adam Hermann to visit Yale and make casts of ceratopsian horncores. Beecher wrote on the twenty-fourth to alert Hatcher and once again denied Osborn’s request based on the “contract” Yale had with Hatcher, which reserved their ceratopsian material for Hatcher’s USGS monograph. By late September, Osborn wrote Hatcher to clarify that he had only wanted the casts for a mount to be put on exhibition, and Hatcher wrote Osborn and Beecher saying he had granted the request and alerted both that he and Prentice would concentrate on studying and illustrating the Yale specimens first so that the preparation of specimens there could proceed more quickly.⁴⁷

Eastman responded to Hatcher’s directives and queries on the eighteenth from Paris, explaining that no detailed agreement existed between him and Holland regarding what groups he could study in the Bayet collection. He hoped to study the fossil fish from Monte Bolca, because Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum had simply listed many forms as not represented, imperfectly known, or not adequately described. Thus, since paleontology’s knowledge of Eocene fish was based largely on that sample, it was imperative that a more comprehensive study of that fauna be conducted and detailed comparisons made between the fossil forms and their close living relatives. Especially concerning were some of Agassiz’s previously published type specimens, in which the bones of the skull were not precisely illustrated and some parts of the anatomy had been described based on artificial restoration of those elements. Eastman followed up a week later to tell Hatcher that the three new genera and fifteen new species he’d come across in the Paris collection had generated great interest, and the director of the museum wanted Eastman to publish a study of them in France, independent of the Bayet publication being planned. But the director didn’t have funding for it, and Eastman wondered if the Carnegie could help. Many of the new species were eels, and Eastman recalled having seen a number of nice eel fossils in the Bayet, which he requested Hatcher set aside as he came across them in his cataloguing. Eastman also indicated the Paris director had heard of plans for the British museum Diplodocus mount and wondered if Paris might acquire a mounted cast also, even giving Eastman a photo of the exhibition hall in Paris where it could be placed.⁴⁸

Series of correspondence continued between Hatcher and several colleagues throughout the second half of September, with McGee writing to say he was disappointed with the Carnegie trustees and implored Holland to let Hatcher serve as an agent for further work in Patagonia, for which Hatcher was appreciative. Scott came through with a partial payment of his long-standing debt, much to the delight of Hatcher. He also wrote Hay to confirm that significant differences existed between the Judith and Laramie faunas, which he would detail in an upcoming paper, and confirmed with Lambe that he would visit Ottawa during the fall or winter to study Lambe’s ceratopsians and the armored dinosaur “Stereocephalus,” now known as Euoplocephalus. Finally, Hatcher notified Osborn that Prentice would arrive in New York on October 1 to begin illustrating the ceratopsian specimens he intended to include in his monograph and thanked Osborn for offering to provide Prentice with aid and advice until Hatcher arrived soon thereafter.⁴⁹

Hatcher then turned to his field crews, coordinating with Gilmore on shipping his collection and arranging for rail passes, adding that “Mistress Hatcher will expect you and your wife and baby to make our house your home until such time as you are comfortably located.” He also complimented Utterback for playing hardball with the dishonest freight hauler and endorsing his desire to have the hauling fee based on the accurate weight to be determined when the crates were loaded on the rail car. He alerted Utterback that Douglass would be shipping his crates to Billings so Utterback could combine them with the crates from the Musselshell region in the shipment. Hatcher also indicated he’d try to arrange for Utterback’s trip to Pittsburgh so that Utterback could visit his family in Indianapolis, and he informed Utterback that he intended to have Silberling collect near his home near Big Timber before returning to Pittsburgh.⁵⁰

The goal was to collect a dinosaur specimen Silberling had found in the Cretaceous Pierre Shale, along with other vertebrates he might find, then make collections from the “Red beds” and the Judith River beds. But most importantly, Silberling should “collect as complete a series as possible of mammalia from the Laramie and Ft. Union or Torrejon beds.” Hatcher declared his great delight on the twenty-eighth with Utterback and Silberling’s new finds of the “armored dinosaur,” directing them to pack those bones in a light strong box and express them to him when they reached Billings. Silberling also stated he planned to spend three weeks in the Tertiary beds near his home and another two weeks in the Pierre, if his dinosaur prospect produced. Otherwise, he’d expand his search to other localities in the Pierre, and Hatcher agreed with his strategy. Utterback continued his tussle with the freighter, who mistakenly delivered some of the USGS crates to the passenger depot in Billings rather than the cargo depot, resulting in their loss until the freighter’s employer tracked them down. Douglass shipped his crates to Billings without paying or providing their weight, so Utterback couldn’t estimate how much it would cost to pay that fee and the overall freight fee to Pittsburgh. Around Musselshell, he and Silberling had collected fourteen crates in September, and there were plenty of prospects for next season. Their haul included a sacrum incorporating eight vertebrae and another vertebral series with about thirty caudals and a pubis, of which Silberling had managed to jacket eleven. They covered the rest in the quarry for the following season. Utterback had also found what he thought was a nearly complete but disarticulated skull of a duckbill dinosaur.⁵¹

Given the potential for continued collecting the following season, Utterback sought Hatcher’s advice about storing the camp outfit near Musselshell over the winter. Hatcher agreed and congratulated Utterback on his “splendid successes,” then wrote Douglass to inform Utterback about the weight of his crates. Hatcher left it to Holland to arrange the complex choreography of the rail shipments, including reserving a car at Billings for Hatcher’s and Utterback’s Judith, Musselshell, and Mayoworth, Wyoming, collections, as well as Douglass’s Bannack, Montana, collection, then arrange for another car at Winona, Kansas, to convey Gilmore’s collection. On the eighth, Hatcher asked Utterback to telegraph the number of the boxcar containing his fossils. He also wrote Gilmore to congratulate him on his discovery of a mosasaur skeleton and to provide the number for his boxcar.⁵²

As Prentice finally began his illustrations of ceratopsian specimens at New Haven in early October, Hatcher confirmed he should make the drawings at half natural size. On the sixth, Prentice completed a palatal view of one specimen, but would be held up for a day because Osborn and Hermann were due to measure brontosaur specimens and make casts of Triceratops horns, so Beecher had covered the other ceratopsian specimens. Nonetheless, Prentice could finish the skull drawing in two more days and commence on drawings of vertebrae or go to the AMNH and begin there. On the eighth, Hatcher asked Prentice to start on Yale’s ceratopsian vertebrae at one-quarter natural size after finishing the skull drawings, then do the drawings of Skull No. 2 (YPM VP 1821) and illustrations of the juvenile ceratopsian specimen. He also recommended, “Do not hesitate to take a half day off when you like either to witness some of the foot-ball games or to enjoy the magnificent scenery with which New Haven is surrounded. To my mind it is the most beautiful city in our country.” Hatcher also wrote Beecher to inform him of Prentice’s schedule and request that Beecher help supervise the work, for which Hatcher would be most appreciative and provide an acknowledgment in his monograph. Beecher’s covering of specimens prompted Osborn to request that Hatcher provide measurements of skull specimens so the exhibition work could be completed, and he assured Hatcher that he’d get credit for directing that part of the restoration.⁵³

Following Eastman’s suggestion, Hatcher moved quickly to open negotiations with Marcellin Boule, the director of the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris regarding an exchange of fossils from his museum for a cast of the Carnegie’s Diplodocus:

I am especially desirous of securing a representative set of the Tertiary mammals of Europe, not so much for purposes of exhibition as for purposes of study and comparison with forms from the American Tertiaries. In your immense collections. . . . you doubtless have many duplicates which you could dispose of without in any way injuring your collections. I should also, if possible, like to secure a . . . series of such dinosaurian and other reptilian remains from European horizons.⁵⁴

Williston wrote Hatcher on the ninth to reassure him that he wasn’t offended that Hatcher had contradicted his earlier notions of the stratigraphic and faunal relationships between the Judith and the Laramie, quipping, “I have known you too long and too well to be lightly offended at criticism. I long ago made a rule, not to reply to criticism, until the subject under discussion came about in the natural course of my work, and then I usually forgot about it!” He was sure Hatcher was correct but implored him to discuss the details of the Laramie stratigraphy, not just the paleontology. He also informed Hatcher that, as foreseen, he was no longer connected with the Field Museum, bemoaning that vertebrate paleontology would not prosper there “so long as the department is subordinated to geology and in charge of one who knows no more of the subject than he does of the biology of the moon.” Hatcher commiserated with his mentor’s plight at the Field on the fourteenth and penned an extensive proclamation regarding the regional stratigraphy in Montana, Wyoming, and Alberta. He felt certain, based on his observations, that the Laramie occupied a position below the Tertiary Fort Union Formation and above the Cretaceous, Fox Hills Formation. There was a forty-foot-thick interval of sandstone at the base of the Laramie that was barren in vertebrate fossils but contained what Stanton thought was a brackish water invertebrate fauna typical of the Laramie. Underlying the Fox Hills was the dark gray shale of the Cretaceous marine Bearpaw Shale, which Hatcher felt was a stratigraphic equivalent of the Pierre Shale. The Judith River beds lay below the Bearpaw/Pierre Shale. Buttressing his conclusion was the following observation:

. . . in central Montana it is possible to pass within a few miles and in a region quite undisturbed by inconformities or faults from the Judith River beds up through the overlying Pierre or Bearpaw shales through the Fox Hill sandstones and into the Laramie beds very similar both lithologically and faunally to the Congress County beds.

That is still the sequence of rock units that geologists and paleontologists recognize to be correct today, and Hatcher elaborated on his thoughts regarding these and other related stratigraphic problems in a paper he published in the American Geologist in 1903. More specifically in terms of geologic time, the Judith River Formation of Montana is now recognized to range in age from about 78 to 75 million years ago. In Alberta, the stratigraphically equivalent geologic unit is called the Belly River Group, which has been split into three formations: the Foremost at the base, the Oldman in the middle, and the Dinosaur Park at the top. Collectively, these three formations also range in age from about 79 to 74 million years ago. Above the Judith River Formation in Montana and the Belly River Group in Alberta lies the Bearpaw Formation, beds of dark gray marine shale that range in age from about 74 to 69 million years ago and represent a time during which the seaway that cut through the middle of North America expanded to cover the terrestrial floodplain sediments represented by the Judith River Formation and the Belly River group. But about 69 million years ago that seaway began to recede, as evidenced by the sandy beach bars represented by the Fox Hills Formation. Then by about 67 or 68 million years ago, the terrestrial floodplain sediments of the Hell Creek and Lance Formations, which Hatcher referred to as the “Laramie” Formation, were deposited in Montana and Wyoming until around 66 million years ago.⁵⁵

Utterback regretfully closed out his season by October 13, knowing there was much more just waiting to be gleaned from the ground. He’d taken out a tibia and five femora, two of which were both four feet three inches long with “one being heavy and massive and the other quite the contrary.” The tibia was associated with several other bones running into the bank, and another spot sported a sacrum with twenty other vertebrae extending into sandstone. In all, they’d tallied sixteen crates weighing 3,500 pounds around Musselshell. His crates in Clearmont weighed 8,865 pounds. With Douglass’s collection, there were eighty-two crates weighing 20,445 pounds: thirty-two boxes of Judith River, twenty-one of Douglass’s Tertiary fossils, and twenty-nine of Utterback’s Jurassic plunder. With that, Utterback sent the load on its way on the twenty-first and headed off to visit his ill father before returning to Pittsburgh. Hatcher was greatly pleased.⁵⁶

Correspondence between Hatcher and George P. Merrill, head curator of geology at the Smithsonian’s NMNH in Washington, D.C., establishes that an agreement was struck for Charles Gilmore to work at the NMNH to prepare fossil material housed there for Hatcher’s horned dinosaur monograph. The USNM would contribute $60 per month, while the Carnegie would pitch in $30. Hatcher also consoled his young field hand A. C. Silberling, upon learning from him that the dinosaur prospect that Silberling thought would be valuable turned out to be a bust. Hatcher wrote, “This is one of the everyday occurrences we have to contend with.” Hatcher further corresponded with Beecher at Yale to pass along directions for his illustrator Prentice and inform Beecher that he’d spend most of November at Yale, during which he hoped Beecher could “secure for me a ticket to the Yale-Princeton football game.”⁵⁷

Also seeking to enhance the Carnegie’s collection was none other than his first field crew leader, Charles H. Sternberg, who wrote Hatcher beginning early November to alert him that he would be happy to send Hatcher a list of the specimens he currently had for sale, especially fossils from the Cretaceous Niobrara Formation in Kansas. However, Hatcher gently rebuffed Sternberg’s approach by clearly stating that although he’d be glad to receive a copy of Sternberg’s catalogue, the high cost of his specimens would fund a field party’s work “for from four to five months, in which time we usually secure one or more skeletons sufficiently complete for mounting, besides much more good material.” Their correspondence would continue throughout December, with Hatcher expressing interest in purchasing a specimen of the titanic marine turtle called Protostega if funds allowed, but he still felt Sternberg’s price was too high.⁵⁸

Today, the catalogue for the Carnegie collections records 256 specimens attributed to Hatcher and his crew for the 1903 season. Hatcher chipped in one dinosaur specimen from the king of all predators, Tyrannosaurus, one specimen of the soft-shelled turtle Trionyx, and, with help from Utterback, the enormous alligator Deinosuchus from the 78- to 75-million-year-old strata of the Judith River Formation, while Peterson stayed to work in the lab.

Utterback’s own odyssey unearthed thirty-seven dinosaur fossils from the 150-million-year-old rock layers of the Morrison Formation, including specimens of the long-necked, herbivorous sauropods Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, Haplocanthosaurus, and Apatosaurus, now called Brotosaurus by some paleontologists, as well as the astounding carnivore Allosaurus. Utterback also tallied a specimen of the titanic tortoise Basilemys from the 78- to 75-million-year-old Judith River Formation, and a duckbill dinosaur called Edmontosaurus from the 66-million-year-old outcrops of the Hell Creek Formation.

Gilmore not only garnered two dinosaur specimens of the sauropod Apatosaurus and the plated Stegosaurus from the Morrison Formation but also a nifty set of six giant marine monitor lizards called mosasaurs, such as Mosasaurus, Platycarpus, Clidastes, and Tylosaurus, as well as nineteen specimens of the flying pterosaur Pteranodon from the 87- to 82-million-year-old chalk beds of the Niobrara Formation, along with a specimen of the enormous carnivorous fish Xiphactinus and a specimen of the mullet fish Syllaemus.

Douglass dug out one shell of Basilemys from the Judith River Formation, as well as seventy-nine mammals, two tortoises, and a lizard from the 37- to 34-million-year-old beds of the Renova Formation, representing the opossum-like marsupial Peratherium; the “scaly anteater” Epoicotherium; the small insectivorous placental Ictops; the shrew-like Micropternodus; the rodents Paradjidaumo, Cylindrodon, Pseudocylindrodon, Ardynomys, and Ischyromys; the rabbit Palaeolagus; the small primitive bear Parictis; the carnivorous creodont Hyaenodon; the tapir Colodon; the rhinos Trigonias and Hyracodon; the brontotheres Megacerops and “Menodus,” now called Megacerops; the horse Mesohippus; the clawed herbivorous ungulate Agriochoerus; the oreodonts Bathygenys, Limentes, and Oreonetes; the deer-like Hendryomeryx; the tortoise Testudo; and the lizard Glyptosaurus. Douglass also collected four mammal specimens from the 30- to 19-million-year-old Cabbage Patch Formation, consisting of the pocket gopher Gregorymys; the oreodonts Ticholeptus and Merychyus; and the small “bear dog” Temnocyon, as well as two fossils of the oreodont Promerycochoerus from the 16- to 12.5-million-year-old sediments of the Deep River Formation and six specimens of Promerycochoerus, Ticholeptus, the antelope-like Merycodus, and one bird track with incomplete field data. Thus, despite limited help in the field from Hatcher, his crew chipped in with a superlative set of fossils that greatly enhanced the Carnegie collection.

Hatcher’s research contined to burgeon as eleven more articles were printed and bound during 1903. Topics ranged from the discoveries about dinosaurs, including “Astrodon,” Haplocanthosaurus, and Diplodocus, to the age and geologic position of the “Belly River beds” as well as the Judith River and Lance Formations. (See Hatcher bibliography)