Report of Work done During the Year ending March 1, 1909

	by Earl Douglass



Dr. Wm. J. Holland, Director Carnegie Museum

My dear sir:-

I continued the work of determining and cataloguing the collections of vertebrate fossils in the Museum, and in preparing papers on undescribed material until my departure for the west in April. I also prepared, in the form of a reconnaisance [sic] an account of the geological conditions in the regions where I had collected in previous years.

I arrived in Grand Junction Colorado on the first day of May. Here I outfitted, and, on the arrival of my assistant Mr. J. T. Goetschius, started for the Uinta Basin in Utah, over one hundred miles distant.

Near Mack, Colorado we spent two or three hours in examining the strata in the canon below the station. Here we found, in one place, many large portions of bones of Brontosaurus, probably belonging to one individual which had been buried here; but our expedition had a definite object in view and we did not stop to excavate.

After arriving in the Uinta Basin we went to Kennedy Station and searched for fossils in the upper or red beds of the Uinta formation, but with little success. We then, having obtained permission of Mr. McAndrews of the Uinta Railway Company, occupied a stone cabin near Well No. 2.

Our success for some weeks was indifferent. We found ledges of rock containing many bones but they were not very satisfactorily preserved as the teeth were usually missing. Later, we found that there were many levels which contained some fossils, and our success steadily increased to the end of the season; so that, considering the fact that the horizons represented here have not yielded fossils anywhere else, our expedition was a very successful one. As the true Uinta and sub-Uinta deposits help to fill the wide gap between the Bridger and Washakie below and the White River above, the collections which were obtained are full of interest which increases as the specimens were removed from the Matrix.

Only one skeleton, complete enough to be mounted, has been obtained in these beds and good skulls are rare; but we obtained between forty and fifty specimens labeled as skulls about twenty or twenty-five of which appear to represent the greater portions of the cranium, some being nearly complete.

We were not successful in finding large parts of skeletons associated with the skulls of the larger mammals but several of the smaller artiodactyls and the Carnivora are represented by many bones of the skeleton.

Little is known of the Reptiles of the Uinta and sub-Uinta horizons but we obtained over forty specimens.

From determinations made in the field at the time of collecting, it appears that in the collection there are nearly one hundred (100) Perissodactyls, thirty two (32) Artiodactyls, nine (9) Carnivores, thirty (30) Turtles, seven crocodiles, five or six other reptiles, and many other specimens.

The director of the Museum made it possible for me to do the work as nearly as possible as I think such work should be done. A tract of ground about twelve or fourteen miles in length east and west and five or six miles in width, comprising about one thousand feet of strata, was pretty carefully explored, some horizontal as well as in vertical section, and samples of rocks were saved at about fifty different levels all through the series, three-hundred or four-hundred pages of notes were written, and many photographs of strata were made. These data will, I believe, help to enable us to ascertain whethere [sic] these beds represent one fauna or several successions of faunas, and to discover the conditions under which the beds were deposited. It is my desire if you approve of the plan, to prepare at some future time, for exhibition not only charts colored after nature but something like plaster representations of these and other western deposits.

Besides the above, many hundreds of fossil plants, insects, Mollusca and remains of fishes were obtained in the Jurassic, Cretaceous, Wastach, and Green River formations.

In several places bones of large Diosaurs were seen and a few fragments collected.

One hundred and eighteen specimens of living plants were collected and turned over to the botanical department.

Since my return to the museum, my time has been occupied in cataloguing and arranging specimens, -- putting them in their permanent locations etc., in getting papers ready for the press, and in work in the laboratory.

The only paper published during the year is: Vertebrate Fossils from the Fort Union Beds.

Two other papers have been submitted and another is nearly ready for the press.

Yours Respectfully,

Earl Douglass