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Oceans of
Kansas
I N D I A N A U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 4 7 4 0 4 - 3 7 9 7 USA

http://iupress.indiana.edu

Telephone orders 800-842-6796

Fax orders 812-855-7931
Orders by e-mail [email protected]

© 2 0 0 5 by Michael J. Everhart

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized

in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
The Association of American University Presses'
Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only
exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the

minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI
Z39.48-1984.

Manufactured in the United States of America

All photographs by Michael J. Everhart
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Everhart, Michael J.
Oceans of Kansas : a natural history of the
western interior sea / Michael J. Everhart.
p. cm. — (Life of the past)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 - 2 5 3 - 3 4 5 4 7 - 2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Marine animals, Fossil—Kansas. 2.
Paleontology—Cretaceous. I. Title. II. Series.
QE766.E89 2005
560'.457'09781—dc22
2004025824

2 3 4 5 10 09 08 0 7 06 0 5
Dedicated to my parents, Jack McKay Everhart (1922-2000) and
Betty Lou Everhart (1923-1994)
" B u t the reader inquires, W h a t is the nature of these creatures
thus left stranded a thousand miles from either ocean? H o w came
they in the limestones of Kansas, and were they denizens of land
or sea?"
Cope, E. D., 1872
 CONTENTS

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations xiii

1 • Introduction: An Ocean in Kansas? 1

• Our Discovery of the Western Interior Sea 14

3 • Invertebrates, Plants, and Trace Fossils 28

4 • Sharks: Sharp Teeth and Shell Crushers 46

5 • Fishes, Large and Small 70

6 • Turtles: Leatherback Giants 102

7 • Where the Elasmosaurs Roamed 120

8 • Pliosaurs and Polycotylids 142

9 • Enter the Mosasaurs 156

1 0 * Pteranodons: Rulers of the Air 188

11 • Feathers and Teeth 215

 12 • Dinosaurs? 229

13 • The Big Picture 240

Epilogue: Where Did It Go? 262

References 267

Index 309

Color plates follow page 104.

viii • Contents
 Preface

Although I am almost a native K a n s a n and proud of my state, I

have to admit that the drive across Kansas on Interstate 70 is not a
major scenic experience if you are expecting mountains or other
dramatic landscapes. W h i l e there are low hills and river valleys to
be crossed along the way, the most visible change from east to west
is going from a moderate number of trees to almost no trees. T h a t
being said, Kansas has many charms that are well hidden from
those w h o are traveling as fast as they can to get across the state,
and even from those w h o have lived here their entire lives. To me,
as a paleontologist, that means a wealth of rock exposures that
faithfully reveal a fossil record compiled over millions of years
when Kansas was covered by a succession of Paleozoic and M e s o -
zoic oceans. N o t e that I use the word " o c e a n s " here in the broadest
sense, since these bodies of water covered portions of a submerged
continent (North America) and are more properly called " s e a s . "
I have been interested in fossils for about as long as I can re-
member. In grade school I had the usual curiosity a b o u t fossil shells
and crinoids that were found in the limestone rocks to the east of
where I lived. G r o w i n g up south of W i c h i t a , K a n s a s , I spent quite a
bit of time exploring along the banks of the Arkansas River, other
streams, and the spoil piles of local sandpits. O c c a s i o n a l l y I would
find the teeth or bones of Pleistocene m a m m a l s . I think that was
when I realized that they represented the remains of extinct animals
that lived long ago in a very different K a n s a s . Somewhere along the
way, I saw my first shark teeth and fish bones from the chalk of
western Kansas. A field trip during a vertebrate paleontology
course in college provided me with my first experience collecting
fossils in the S m o k y Hill C h a l k , and I have been hooked on that
particular time span ever since.
Kansas has a wide variety of fossils, from very old Mississip-
pian rocks (more than 3 4 0 million years old) in the extreme south-
eastern corner of the state to the Late Cretaceous rocks (about 75

ix
 million years old) of northwestern Kansas, that were deposited as
b o t t o m muds in the series of Paleozoic and M e s o z o i c oceans that
covered K a n s a s . M o r e recently deposited Tertiary sediments (non-
marine) containing the remains of extinct terrestrial animals are
found along and in streams and rivers statewide. T h a t means you
can find fossils just a b o u t anywhere in the state. If you are interest-
ing in collecting fossils in Kansas, the first thing to decide is what
kind of fossils you w a n t to collect. T h e best place to start, in that
regard, is a library or b o o k s t o r e . I would recommend two b o o k s as
"must h a v e " references for amateur fossil hunters in Kansas:
Kansas Geology, edited by R e x Buchanan ( 1 9 8 4 ) , and Roadside
Kansas, by R. C. Buchanan and J. R. M c C a u l e y ( 1 9 8 7 ) . O n c e you
have an idea of what kind of fossils you want to find and where to
look for them, you're ready to get serious a b o u t it. T h e r e are many
places where rocks are exposed and accessible to collectors. T h e
most important thing to remember, however, is that most fossils in
Kansas are on private property. You must have permission from the
owner to go on the land and to collect. Always respect the property
of others, take proper safety precautions, never leave your trash be-
hind, and, most of all, have fun.
T h e intent of this b o o k is to provide information about many
of the animals that lived during the Late Cretaceous and, to some
extent, the people w h o discovered their fossil remains and de-
scribed them. T h e r e are a number of excellent sources of informa-
tion available in print and on the Internet regarding other kinds of
fossils that c a n be found in K a n s a s , and the reader is encouraged to
spend some time learning a b o u t paleontology in general.

x • Preface
 Acknowledgments

There are so many people w h o , over the years, have helped me

learn and understand the paleontology of Kansas during the L a t e
Cretaceous that it is difficult to k n o w where to begin in expressing
my appreciation. You've all heard the adage that it takes a village
to raise a child. I can certainly testify that it also takes o n e to write
a book.
First, I thank my wife, Pamela Everhart, for her support and
companionship in the field (not to mention her superior ability to
find interesting things for me to dig up). She was also properly im-
pressed when I brought a m a m m o t h tooth to class while we were in
high school. T h i s b o o k and a lot of other projects in paleontology
would not have been possible for me without her. T h e rest of the
list follows in no particular order. My fifth grade teacher, Vivian
Louthan, encouraged my interest in " r o c k s " and t o o k me to a gem
and mineral show that left a lasting impression. J o h n R a n s o m ,
Harry R o u n d s , and D o n Distler, a m o n g many other teachers,
guided my interest in the study of living things and the remains of
things that lived millions of years ago. Paul Tasch introduced me to
the Smoky Hill C h a l k on a vertebrate paleontology field trip in
1 9 6 8 , and I immediately was h o o k e d on it. David Parris, B a r b a r a
Grandstaff, and J. D. Stewart were all supportive as well as being
excellent teachers and resources of otherwise unknown and myste-
rious information when we were getting started in our serious
study of the Smoky Hill C h a l k in the late 1 9 8 0 s . Although he may
not remember it, David Parris sponsored my membership in the S o -
ciety of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) many years ago. I owe a
major debt o f thanks t o J . D . Stewart and D o n a l d Hattin for our
continuing discussion of the stratigraphy of the S m o k y Hill C h a l k .
Pete Bussen has been a source of valuable information on history,
paleontology, weather, and a variety of other useful subjects, which
he gained in pursuit of his " D o c t o r of Disagree-ology" degree. I
have found that Pete has a learned opinion on just about every-
 thing, whether I asked for it or not. A number of landowners in
western K a n s a s , including the Albins, Birds, B a b c o c k s , Bentleys,
Bodeckers, Bonners, Cheneys, Collinses, Millers, and Surratts have
generously allowed us access to their property over the years and
obviously made many of our discoveries possible. Richard Z a -
krzewski, Larry M a r t i n , and Ken Carpenter made the collections in
their charge available for study and provided guidance and answers
to even more questions. T h e i r friendship has always been appreci-
ated. R i c h a r d Zakrzewski assisted in getting my appointment as an
Adjunct C u r a t o r of Paleontology at the Sternberg M u s e u m . Dale
Russell, Gorden Bell, J i m M a r t i n , Bruce Schumacher, Kenshu Shi-
mada, David Schwimmer, Glenn Storrs, Takehito Ikejiri and David
Cicimurri indulged me in discussions of a variety of subjects, but
mostly mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and sharks. Earl M a n n i n g , in par-
ticular, has been a wonderful resource of useful information on
identification of specimens, reference material, historical issues in
paleontology, and general all-around c o m m o n sense. At one time
or another, B o b Purdy, M i c h a e l Brett-Surman, Earle Spamer, Ted
Daeschler, Charles Schaff, Desui M a i o , M i c h a e l M o r a l e s , George
Corner, Greg Liggett, and many others have helped me track down
fossils that originated in K a n s a s . D a n Varner, D o u g Henderson,
Russell Hawley, and other artists have provided me with their en-
lightened reconstructions of a lost world I can only dream about.
Steve J o h n s o n ' s questions regarding a few mosasaur vertebrae led
us both to a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. T h e time spent in the field
with T o m C a g g i a n o , Steve Balliett, and Andy Abdul has been as ed-
ucational for me as I hope it has been for them. I will always " o w e "
T o m C a g g i a n o for his discovery of the missing dinosaur foot.
Shawn H a m m and Keith Ewell dragged me "kicking and scream-
i n g " into the study of fossil sharks from other formations in
K a n s a s . A n u m b e r of a n o n y m o u s reviewers and some who aren't
a n o n y m o u s have made me aware (tactfully, of course) of my short-
comings as a writer and paleontologist—their assistance has been
invaluable to me and I hope they see that I learned something in the
process. Access to the Internet has allowed me to meet and con-
verse with co-workers in distant places that I will probably never
meet in person. Nevertheless, I c o u n t them as good friends and
thank them for their help over the years. A number of library peo-
ple from all over the world, including Angie from Kansas and Steve
from N e w Z e a l a n d , have helped me to accumulate necessary pale-
ontology reference materials, some of which are extremely rare or
difficult to find.
And in closing, I certainly appreciate all those people from
around the world w h o have c o m m u n i c a t e d with me in English be-
cause I k n o w I would have never been able to return the favor in
their language. W h i l e this turned out to be a long list, I'm sure I've
unintentionally left out several people, so please forgive the over-
sight. As I said earlier, it takes a village . . .

xii • Acknowledgments
 Abbreviations

AMNH American M u s e u m o f Natural History, N e w

York, New York
ANSP Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
CMC Cincinnati M u s e u m Center, Cincinnati, O h i o
CMNH Carnegie M u s e u m o f N a t u r a l History,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
DMNH/DMNS Denver M u s e u m of Nature and Science,
Denver, C o l o r a d o
ESU Emporia State University Geology M u s e u m ,
E m p o r i a , Kansas
FFHM Fick Fossil and History M u s e u m , Oakley,
Kansas
FHSM Sternberg M u s e u m of Natural History, F o r t
Hays State University, H a y s , Kansas
FMNH T h e Field M u s e u m , C h i c a g o , Illinois
KU University of Kansas Invertebrate Paleontology
Collection, Lawrence, Kansas
KUVP University of Kansas Vertebrate Paleontology
Collection, Lawrence, Kansas
LACMNH Los Angeles County M u s e u m of Natural
History, Los Angeles, California
MCZ M u s e u m o f Comparative Zoology, Harvard,
Cambridge, Massachusetts
NAMAL N o r t h American M u s e u m of Ancient Life,
Lehi, Utah
NJSM N e w Jersey State M u s e u m , T r e n t o n , N e w
Jersey
 ROM Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada
SDSMT South D a k o t a School o f M i n e s and
Technology, R a p i d City, South D a k o t a
UCM University o f C o l o r a d o M u s e u m , Boulder,
Colorado
UNO University o f N e w Orleans, N e w Orleans,
Louisiana
UPI Uppsala Paleontological Institute, Uppsala
University, Sweden
UNSM University o f N e b r a s k a State M u s e u m , Lincoln,
Nebraska
USNM United States N a t i o n a l M u s e u m , Washington,
D.C.
YPM Yale Peabody M u s e u m , N e w Haven,
Connecticut

xiv • Abbreviations
Oceans of
Kansas
One
Introduction:
An Ocean in Kansas?

One Day in the Life of a Mosasaur

T h e bright midday sun glinted off the calm waters of the Inland
Sea and silhouetted the long, sinuous form of a huge mosasaur
lying motionless amid the floating tangle of yellow-green seaweed.
Twenty years old and more than thirty feet in length, the adult
mosasaur was almost full-grown and was much larger than any of
the fish or sharks that lived in the shallow seaway. A swift and
powerful swimmer over short distances, the mosasaur used surprise
and the thrust of his muscular tail to outrun his prey with a short
burst of speed. His jaws were more than four feet long and were
lined with sharp, conical teeth that he used to seize and hold his
prey. Several unusual adaptations in his lower jaws allowed them
to flex in the middle and enabled him to easily swallow the large
fish and other animals he caught. T h i s ability was essential to the
mosasaur because he had to hold on to his prey with his teeth or
risk losing it. If he let go of his prey in the middle of the o c e a n ,
there was a g o o d c h a n c e it would sink to the b o t t o m and be lost, or
be grabbed by a hungry shark.
He was floating at the surface with his eyes and nostrils just
 a b o v e the water. His dark upper body absorbed hot rays of the Late
Cretaceous sun as dozens of tiny fish emerged from hiding in the
seaweed and darted cautiously around his submerged bulk. T h e y
were feeding on parasites and other small invertebrates that had at-
tached themselves to his scaly hide. He breathed slowly and quietly
through his nostrils as his ears and other senses remained on the
alert for the telltale sounds made by approaching prey. He was a
patient hunter, preferring to let his victims c o m e to him instead of
wasting energy swimming around the vast seaway in search of
food.
Overhead, winged reptiles of various sizes floated lazily
through the cloudless sky, riding the wind currents above the warm
water while looking for schools of small fish feeding near the sur-
face. Occasionally, one would skim the surface of the water and
grab an unwary fish with its n a r r o w beak. T h e mosasaur had re-
cently tried to eat the floating carcass of a dead pteranodon, but
found the thin wings difficult to get into his mouth. After tearing
off the small body, he had let the rest of the animal sink to the bot-
t o m . T h e living ones overhead could see him clearly from above
and avoided feeding near him.
Amid an ever-changing mixture of background noises made by
a variety of creatures in the o c e a n , he noticed that a faint buzz of
clicking sounds was getting louder, alerting him to a group of hard-
shelled a m m o n i t e s that was feeding nearby. T h o u g h not his fa-
vorite prey, they were all that had approached him since he had
taken a large, solitary fish early in the morning. Even with that re-
cent meal, his appetite was still unsatisfied and hunger was begin-
ning to g n a w at him. T h e adaptations that made it possible for
mosasaurs to return to the sea included an increased metabolism
and a requirement for larger amounts of food to support a more ac-
tive lifestyle.
Exhaling most of the air from his lungs, he slowly submerged
his head, leaving behind only the faintest of ripples. His large eyes
immediately found the brightly colored, coiled shells of the am-
monites as they approached, b o b b i n g and darting below him. Pro-
pelled by water forced through their internal siphons, they moved
generally b a c k w a r d s through the water, with their short tentacles
trailing behind them. Instinctively, he knew that their large shells
would hide him from their view until they had moved well past
him. He would m a k e his attack from a b o v e , long before they had a
c h a n c e to sense the danger.
Using his four large paddles, the mosasaur carefully maneu-
vered his long, snakelike form into an attack position, watching in-
tently for any indication that the a m m o n i t e s had detected the dan-
ger from above. Singling out a slightly larger ammonite at the edge
of the group, he dived d o w n w a r d with a powerful slash of his long,
broad tail. T h e ammonites reacted quickly and instinctively to the
disturbance, scattering in all directions below him, but not before
his heavy jaws closed across the soft forebody of his victim. His
sharp teeth shattered the front edge of the ammonite's shell, de-

2 • Oceans of Kansas
stroying the buoyancy of the shell and rendering the a m m o n i t e
helpless.
Without his captive pocket of air, the ammonite would sink
swiftly to the b o t t o m of the seaway. With practiced ease, the
mosasaur flexed his body upward and raised the a m m o n i t e toward
the surface. T h e n he released it and grabbed the tentacles of the im-
mobilized creature with his teeth as it began to sink. F a r t o o late,
the ammonite released a cloud of jet-black ink into the water. T h e
mosasaur ignored the bitter taste of the ammonite's last defense as
he gave a quick jerk of his head to pull the ammonite's soft body
from its shell. T h e heavy shell and several fragments slipped side-
ways through the water and quickly disappeared into the murky
depths. Opening and closing his jaws rapidly, he swallowed the
fleshy morsel in a single gulp.
Looking around for more prey, he saw another a m m o n i t e
swimming in confused circles nearby. A swift lunge and his sharp
teeth crunched through the ammonite's hard shell. M o m e n t s later,
the soft body of the second a m m o n i t e followed the first into the
mosasaur's s t o m a c h . T h e rest of the ammonites had jetted away as
fast as they could and were no longer in view. His hunger briefly
satisfied, he rose slowly to the surface to breathe and resume his
ambush position rather than chasing after the fleeing shellfish.
He had hardly settled into waiting when he sensed the noises
made by the approach of another mosasaur. Female mosasaurs
tended to band together in pods for the protection of their young,
while the males were solitary and very territorial. T h e approaching
mosasaur was probably a young male searching for his own place
in the expanse of the Inland Sea. In one swift, fluid m o t i o n , the
older mosasaur turned and began to swim rapidly toward the
sound of the approaching intruder. With his flippers held tightly
against his body, the mosasaur moved quickly through the water
just beneath the surface. His tail broke through the water's surface
repeatedly as he intentionally made as much noise as possible. He
wanted to sound as threatening as possible to the other mosasaur.
Although he was prepared to fight for his territory, he would first
try to frighten other males away with his size and ferocity. Long-
healed scars on his body showed that even the winners in such
fights could be badly hurt. He had been lucky several times earlier
in his life and had survived injuries that easily could have been
fatal. As he had gotten older, he had learned to avoid such battles
whenever possible.
His course intercepted the other mosasaur broadside in a patch
of open water. Turning quickly to face the threat, the smaller ani-
mal displayed a mouth filled with sharp teeth. Despite being nearly
ten feet shorter and much less massive, the invader refused to turn
and flee. T h e big mosasaur circled warily around his n o w station-
ary foe, watching intently as the other animal almost doubled back
upon itself as it continued to show its open jaws. Trying to appear
as threatening as possible, the younger animal still refused to turn
and run.

Introduction • 3
 T h e larger mosasaur was in no m o o d for such tactics. M a k i n g
a large splash with his tail to distract the intruder, he surged for-
ward and seized the smaller animal across the throat and back of
the head. F o r a m o m e n t , the smaller mosasaur struggled helplessly
as the powerful grip of the larger animal threatened to crush his
skull. T h e n the larger mosasaur moved his head quickly, snapping
the other mosasaur's neck. T h e smaller mosasaur gave a brief shud-
der, then went limp. Angrily, the big mosasaur shook the slender
body again, making certain that his foe was no longer a threat.
Realizing that his victim was t o o large for him to swallow, the
mosasaur released his grip and moved away. T h e body of the dead
mosasaur rose slowly toward the surface and floated there until
most of the remaining air had escaped from its lungs. T h e n it began
to sink headfirst toward the b o t t o m . Still enraged by the invasion
of his territory, the big mosasaur searched a b o u t for any other in-
terlopers as he swam in a large circle back to his ambush site. T h e
c o m m o t i o n caused by the brief battle had frightened any other prey
away and would certainly draw sharks to the area to feed on the re-
mains of the dead mosasaur. Sharks also seemed to be attracted to
the movement of a mosasaur's tail. Although he was too large for
them to be much of a threat to him, any shark bite could cause a
wound that could b e c o m e seriously infected. He already had sev-
eral healed scars from past bites on his tail and flippers.
Later in the afternoon, he sensed the noisy approach of a group
of swimming birds. Large and wingless, these birds migrated
through the seaway on the way to and from their nesting grounds
to the north. T h e y were fast swimmers and fed on the abundance of
small fish and squid that lived in the sea, catching them in their
toothed beaks.
He submerged quietly until he was well below the surface, then
swam slowly toward the birds. F r o m the sounds he heard, he could
tell they were feeding. In the past, he had been able to ambush care-
less stragglers from below as they rested between dives for food.
Nearing the flock, he could see the darker bodies of the birds sil-
houetted against the sunlit surface as they dived and fed on a
school of small, silvery fish they had trapped. Slashing his powerful
tail from side to side, he surged upward toward the body of the
nearest bird. His mouth opened just before he reached the surface
and quickly closed on the bird as his m o m e n t u m carried his upper
body several feet out of the water. Crushed by his powerful jaws,
the bird struggled briefly and died.
W h e n he was certain his prey would not escape, he moved the
limp body around in his mouth until it was pointed headfirst into
his throat. T h e n he lifted his head out of the water and allowed
gravity to help him swallow the bird. T h e noise made by the rest of
the retreating flock was already fading in the distance.
T h e hours passed by and dark clouds of an approaching storm
covered the sun as it sank toward the horizon. Driven by the chang-
ing weather, the waves became larger and larger. T h e mosasaur
found it increasingly difficult to maintain his stationary position

4 • Oceans of Kansas
and nearly impossible to sense the approach of possible prey
against the increasing background noise caused by the wind and
rain. Instinctively, he knew it was time to move to open water.
M o v i n g forward with rhythmic undulations of his tail, he headed
toward the edge of the seaweed mat.

Imagine if you will the middle of N o r t h America covered by a

vast inland sea. M o s t o f T e x a s , N e w M e x i c o , O k l a h o m a , C o l -
orado, Kansas, N e b r a s k a , South D a k o t a , N o r t h D a k o t a , W y o m i n g
and M o n t a n a , parts of M i s s o u r i , I o w a , and M i n n e s o t a , as well as
central Canada are underneath a shallow ocean. N o t just any
ocean, but one that stretched for hundreds of miles from Utah to
M i n n e s o t a , and from the G u l f of M e x i c o past the Arctic Circle. At
times, this ancient ocean was as large as the present-day Mediter-
ranean Sea and was the home of many kinds of strange creatures
that have been extinct for more than 65 million years. This sea cov-
ered Kansas and the rest of the Midwest during most of the last 70
million years of the Age of Dinosaurs, and almost until the very end
of the Cretaceous period (Fig. 1.1).
T h e Cretaceous period lasted from a b o u t 1 4 4 million years ago
until 65 million years ago. For much of that time, most of the land
we now call the Midwest was completely covered by a shallow,
saltwater ocean. Drainage from the older N o r t h American conti-
nent to the east and the mountains rising on the new land to the
west carried vast amounts of soil, sand, and gravel into this seaway,
creating intermixed layers of sandstone, shale, and mudstones
along the shorelines. In the clear waters at the center of the seaway,
calcium carbonate shells of untold billions of microscopic creatures
produced thick layers of limestone and chalk.
In Kansas, the geological record of the Cretaceous begins with
marine and near-shore deposits of the Cheyenne Sandstone and
Kiowa Shale formations that lie on top of the M o r r i s o n F o r m a t i o n
(Jurassic) in the west, and the Wellington F o r m a t i o n (Permian) in
the central part of the state. T h e last Cretaceous rocks are the dark
gray beds of the Pierre Shale in the northwest corner. Almost 70
million years of geologic history is preserved in between. O n e of
the deposits near the top layer of the Cretaceous rocks in Kansas is
referred to as the N i o b r a r a F o r m a t i o n . It contains a unique upper
member called the S m o k y Hill C h a l k . T h i s chalk is composed
mostly of calcium c a r b o n a t e , much like that found in the white
cliffs of Dover, England. T h e Smoky Hill Chalk was deposited in
Kansas during a five-million-year time span, roughly between 87
and 82 million years ago. During that time, the Western Interior
Sea was gradually retreating from its greatest expansion. T h e depo-
sition of these chalky marine sediments occurred during the last
half of the Cretaceous period, and ended a b o u t 17 million years be-
fore the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.
In Kansas, the Smoky Hill Chalk is a b o u t 6 0 0 feet thick and
lies above the Fort Hays Limestone and below the Pierre Shale. F o r
the most part, the chalk is composed of compacted shells ( c o c c o -
Figure 1.1. The above map shows liths) of m i c r o s c o p i c , golden-brown algae (Chrysophyceae) that
the approximate boundaries of lived and died by the untold billions in the w a r m , shallow sea. B e -
the Western Interior Sea during
sides making up the chalk, these microscopic plants were the basis
the deposition of the Smoky Hill
Chalk. Present-day exposures of for the c o m p l e x food chain that supported vast numbers of fish and
the chalk are located just above m a n y large predators, including sharks, mosasaurs, pteranodons,
the "K" in Kansas. Adapted from and birds.
Schwimmer, 2002 (King of the
T h e Western Interior Sea, sometimes just called the Inland Sea,
Crocodylians, Indiana University
Press); base map by Ron Hirzel. was formed by the flooding of low-lying areas of the North Ameri-
can continent during a period of the earth's history when there

6 • Oceans of Kansas
were no polar ice caps and sea level was at its highest. N e a r the cen-
ter of the sea, the water was probably less than 6 0 0 feet deep (Hat-
tin, 1 9 8 2 ) and the limey mud b o t t o m was relatively flat and fea-
tureless. In the area where Kansas is n o w located, the sediments
were deposited at a rate which would ultimately produce about one
inch of hardened chalk for every 7 0 0 years of time (ibid.). T h e
chalk also contains more than a hundred thin layers of bentonite
clay, most of which are rusty red in color, that are the remains of
ash deposited from periodic, m a j o r volcanic eruptions in what is
now Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and M o n t a n a . T h e s e ash deposits can
be traced for miles across the chalk beds and are currently used as
chronological markers when describing the stratigraphy of the for-
mation. In addition, several species of vertebrate and invertebrate
marine life that lived in the Western Interior Sea at different times
during the deposition of the chalk are useful in determining the age
and biostratigraphy of widely separated exposures (Chapter 1 3 ) .
This shallow ocean was h o m e to a variety of marine animals
that are now extinct. T h e s e included giant c l a m s , rudists, crinoids,
squid, ammonites, numerous sharks and bony fish, turtles, ple-
siosaurs, mosasaurs, pteranodons, and even several species of prim-
itive marine birds with teeth. Although it seems unlikely that you
would find dinosaur fossils in the middle of the Western Interior
Sea, a number of them (a hadrosaur and several nodosaurs) have
been collected from the S m o k y Hill C h a l k , and their remains have
been well documented (Carpenter et al., 1 9 9 5 ) . T h e bodies of these
dinosaurs must have s o m e h o w floated hundreds of miles out to sea
before sinking to the b o t t o m . It is possible that they died during
catastrophic floods and were carried out to sea in large, tangled
mats of trees and other vegetation.
Over a period of about five million years, the remains of many
of these animals were preserved as fossils in the soft, chalky mud of
the sea b o t t o m . W h e n this mud was compressed under the weight
of thousands of feet of overlying shale, it became a deposit of chalk
that is about 6 0 0 feet thick in western K a n s a s . M o s t of the massive
chalk formation that o n c e covered K a n s a s , however, has been
eroded away over the last 60 million years and is n o w exposed only
in a relatively small area in the northwest quarter of the state. T h e
eastern edge of this part of Kansas is also k n o w n as the S m o k y
Hills, which provided the name for the S m o k y Hill River and ulti-
mately for the geological formation k n o w n as the S m o k y Hill
Chalk.
During the last 1 3 0 years or so, the S m o k y Hill C h a l k has been
the source of thousands of fossil specimens, many of which are on
exhibit today in museums around the world. A large number of
these were collected by or for such famous paleontologists as E. D.
C o p e , O. C. M a r s h , S. W. Williston, and the Sternberg family.
These specimens include a large portion of the Yale Peabody M u -
seum collection that resulted from the Yale College scientific expe-
ditions of the 1 8 7 0 s . M u c h of the early work on the Cretaceous
fossils from Kansas was published in volumes 2, 4, and 6 of the

Introduction • 7
 University Geological Survey of Kansas ( 1 8 9 7 , 1 8 9 8 and 1 9 0 0 ) .
Descriptions of these strange, "prehistoric" animals from their
often fragmentary remains were sometimes bizarre by today's stan-
dards and often resulted in inaccurate reconstructions drawn under
the direction of the various paleontologists. E. D. C o p e was one of
the most imaginative in his descriptions of not only h o w the ani-
mals looked, but h o w they lived and interacted. C o p e ( 1 8 7 2 ) noted
in regard to mosasaurs that "their heads were large, flat, and conic,
with eyes directed partly upward; that they were furnished with
t w o pairs of paddles like the flippers of a whale, but with short or
no portion representing the arm. W i t h these flippers and the eel-like
strokes of their flattened tail they swam, some with less others with
greater speed. T h e y were furnished, like snakes, with four rows of
formidable teeth on the r o o f of the mouth. T h o u g h these were not
designed for mastication, and, without paws for grasping, could
have been little used for cutting, as weapons for seizing their prey
they were very formidable."
Another good example of this sort of fanciful (and in this case
highly inaccurate) prose was provided by the "Father of American
Paleontology," J o s e p h Leidy ( 1 8 7 0 , p. 1 0 ) , in his description of
Elasmosaurus: " W e may imagine this extraordinary creature, with
its turtle-like body, paddling about, at one m o m e n t darting its head
a distance of upwards of twenty feet into the depths of the sea after
its fish prey, at another into the air after some feathered or other
winged reptile, or perhaps when near shore, even reaching so far as
to seize by the throat some biped dinosaur."
M a n y fossil specimens from the chalk have been found by am-
ateur collectors, and many of these have been significant additions
to paleontology. B o t h the Sternberg M u s e u m of Natural History at
Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, and the M u s e u m of
Natural History at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas,
have excellent collections and exhibits of fossils from the Smoky
Hill Chalk. T h e Denver M u s e u m of Nature and Science in Denver,
C o l o r a d o ; the Sam N o b l e M u s e u m of Natural History in N o r m a n ,
O k l a h o m a ; the Field M u s e u m in C h i c a g o , Illinois; the Philadelphia
Academy of Natural Sciences; and the American M u s e u m of Nat-
ural History also have many Kansas fossils. M a n y Kansas fossils
were also sold to major museums in Europe and elsewhere around
the world by the Sternberg family and others. Unfortunately, we
don't have a good record of where all these fossils have gone, and
even worse, we realize that some of them were destroyed during
t w o world wars.

Kansas during the Cretaceous: A Timeline

F o r the most part, this b o o k will discuss discoveries regarding
the natural history of the Western Interior Sea during the deposi-
tion of the S m o k y Hill C h a l k during a period roughly between 87
and 82 million years ago (mya). However, in order to better under-
stand that time interval, it is useful to look at the Kansas oceans

8 • O c e a n s of Kansas
during that portion of the Cretaceous for which we have a geologi-
cal record in the state.
T h e M e s o z o i c (Age of Reptiles) is divided into three major pe-
riods: the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous. Based on the
1 9 9 9 geologic time scale published by the Geological Society of
America, the Mesozoic lasted roughly 1 8 0 million years. T h e Cre-
taceous period is the last of the three, unequal divisions, roughly
from 1 4 4 million mya to a b o u t 65 mya, or a time interval just short
of 80 million years. In Kansas, the geological record as shown in
the surface rocks is missing for all of the Triassic, almost all of the
Jurassic, and most of the Early Cretaceous. R o c k s of the latter part
of the Early Cretaceous lie non-conformably upon shales of the
Permian period in the central part of the state, and on the edge of
the Morrison F o r m a t i o n in the far west. In this case, " n o n - c o n -
formably" means there is a gap of a b o u t 1 4 0 million years in the
geological record between the top of the Permian rocks and the
bottom of the Cretaceous rocks (middle Albian). T h e gap is less in
the western part of the state, where there is " o n l y " 40 million years
of " t i m e " missing between the M o r r i s o n F o r m a t i o n (Late Jurassic)
and the latter part of the Early Cretaceous. In other words, rocks
from most of the M e s o z o i c ( 1 4 0 of 1 8 0 million years) are missing
in most of Kansas. W h i l e we presume that Kansas was above sea
level and eroding away for a least part of that time interval, what-
ever was going on in Kansas during the Triassic and Jurassic will
probably never be k n o w n for certain.
We can, however, say quite a lot about the fossil record in the
Cretaceous rocks that are preserved in Kansas. These layers of Cre-
taceous rocks, representing a fairly continuous progression of time
from the oldest to the youngest, are stacked upon one another in an
orderly fashion. O n e of the advantages to understanding the geol-
ogy of Kansas is that it is relatively simple to visualize compared to
places like C o l o r a d o or Arizona. T h e r e are no mountains to con-
tend with and everything is pretty flat, at least in the large-scale
view. T h e youngest Cretaceous rocks are in the northwest corner of
the state, and the oldest rocks (Mississippian) occur in the south-
east corner. Put another way, as you travel roughly 4 3 0 miles from
St. Francis (Cheyenne County) in the northwest corner to B a x t e r
Springs (Cherokee County) in the southeast, you are descending
2 5 0 million years through time (geologically speaking) at an aver-
age of about 5 8 0 , 0 0 0 years to the mile. It is almost like being in a
time machine.
In this b o o k , however, I am going to be describing the discov-
ery of animals that lived during a much shorter period of time. T h e
book will concentrate on the relatively brief geological period when
the Smoky Hill Chalk was deposited near the middle of the Western
Interior Sea, but I will take occasional "side trips" into other parts
of the Cretaceous in Kansas where the rocks were deposited as a se-
ries of near-shore sandstones (including a river delta) and off-shore
shales and deeper water limestones and chalks from about 1 1 2 mya
to 75 mya. I hope that when I'm done, you'll better understand

Introduction • 9
h o w the geological record of that period was preserved at the bot-
tom of the oceans of Kansas. Merriam's ( 1 9 6 3 ) The Geologic His-
tory of Kansas is one of the better references in regard to the sur-
face and subsurface rocks occurring in the state. Buchanan ( 1 9 8 4 )
and Buchanan and M c C a u l e y ( 1 9 8 7 ) provide introductory guides
to the rocks, fossils, and roadside geology of Kansas. Additional in-
formation on the Cretaceous fossils and geology of Kansas is avail-
able on the Internet through the O c e a n s of Kansas Paleontology
website (http://www.oceansofkansas.com).
T h e oldest Cretaceous formation in Kansas is the Cheyenne
Sandstone. This is relatively pure (beach?) sand that was deposited
in south central Kansas (Clark and K i o w a counties) along the
northern or northeastern shoreline of the sea as it advanced from
the south. This flooding occurred near the end of the Early Creta-
ceous during an age called the Albian. As the sea advanced, cover-
ing the much older and heavily eroded Permian Shales, the sedi-
ments that were deposited changed from sand to sandy shales and
then dense gray shales (Scott, 1 9 7 0 ) . T h e s e shales represent the
remnants of rocks that were being eroded from nearby land masses
and being carried into the ocean by rivers flowing from the land.
T h e gray shales that m a k e up the overlying K i o w a Shale preserve
evidence of abundant life in the shallow sea and the nearby shore-
line (many invertebrates, teeth of sharks, bones of fish, turtles, ple-
siosaurs, and crocodiles). T h e sea continued to expand north and
eastward across Kansas throughout the Albian age. As it did, it
buried the Cheyenne Sandstone and K i o w a Shale under blankets of
mud and other sediments that rained down on the sea floor (Fig.
1.2).
A b o u t 99 mya, the Albian stage (Early Cretaceous) ended and
the C e n o m a n i a n stage (Late Cretaceous) began. In north-central
Kansas, this is evidenced by sand and other sediments that were de-
posited in a huge delta by a major river or rivers flowing into the
east edge of the sea from the northeast. Iron-rich rocks from as far
away as Wisconsin and M i c h i g a n were being eroded away bit by
bit and carried to the edge of the sea in central Kansas, where they
were laid down layer after layer, forming the D a k o t a Sandstone.
This formation is visible today as buttes and other multi-colored
(off-white to dark reddish-purple) erosional features to the north-
west of M c P h e r s o n and around Kanopolis Lake in the central part
of the state ( M c P h e r s o n , Saline, Ellsworth, and Russell Counties).
Historically, major vertebrate fossils have been limited to a c r o c o -
dile (Dakotasuchus kingi: M e h l , 1 9 4 1 ; Vaughn, 1 9 5 6 ) and a few
general reports that mention the teeth of sharks and bony fish. R e -
cent collections of the Upper D a k o t a , however, indicate a rich ma-
rine fauna (Everhart et al., 2 0 0 4 ) of sharks, rays, and bony fish that
existed during the transition from a non-marine to a near-shore
marine environment (Hattin and Siemers, 1 9 7 8 ) . M a n y thousands
of leaf impressions were collected by G. M. Sternberg, B. F. Mudge,
C. H. Sternberg, and others from the D a k o t a (Lesquereux, 1 8 6 8 )
beginning in the m i d - 1 8 6 0 s .
 Figure 1.2. A generalized
stratigraphic column of the Early
and Late Cretaceous formations in
west-central Kansas. Adapted
from Shimada, 1996. (L = Lower;
M = Middle; U = Upper).

N e a r the middle of the C e n o m a n i a n , sea levels rose again, and

a dark gray shale called the G r a n e r o s covered the D a k o t a Sand-
stone, effectively burying the river delta under some ten meters of
mud (Hattin and Siemers, 1 9 7 8 ) . T h e sea continued to deepen and
the Graneros Shale was replaced by the Lincoln Limestone M e m b e r
of the Greenhorn Limestone during the Upper C e n o m a n i a n . T h e
deposition of limestone continued thorough the L o w e r Turonian.
At the high-water mark of this expansion (transgression) of the sea,
a 3 0 - c m ( 1 0 - 1 2 - i n . ) layer of resistant limestone was laid down,
forming the Fencepost Limestone bed at the top of the G r e e n h o r n
Limestone F o r m a t i o n .

Introduction • 11
 At the beginning of the middle Turonian, the sea began to re-
cede (regress) from the middle of the continent. A chalky limestone
called the Fairport C h a l k M e m b e r of the Carlile Shale was de-
Figure 1.3. A map of western posited for a time and then was replaced by the dark gray Blue Hill
Kansas, circa 1868-1869, just Shale M e m b e r . N e a r the end of the middle Turonian, the coastline
prior to the completion of the was approaching rapidly and the shale was replaced by the near-
Kansas (Union) Pacific Railroad.
shore Codell Sandstone.
Many of the discoveries described
by Cope and Marsh from Kansas By the beginning of the Upper Turonian, the ocean was gone
occurred south of the railroad, again from K a n s a s , or at least no record of deposition remains
along the Smoky Hill River in from that time. M a j o r erosion occurred in the central part of the
Wallace, Cove, and Trego
state, where almost all the Codell Sandstone has been removed.
counties. Note that present-day
Logan County is the eastern half During the following transgression, when the seas returned at the
of what was Wallace County in beginning of the C o n i a c i a n , they deepened rapidly and the clear-
1870. water Fort Hays Limestone ( M e r r i a m , 1 9 6 3 ) was deposited on top

12 • Oceans of Kansas
of the remaining Codell Sandstone. T h e Fort Hays Limestone is the
lower member of the N i o b r a r a F o r m a t i o n , formed during a period
when the sea was at its widest and the water near the center
(Kansas) was the deepest. By the middle of the C o n i a c i a n , the sea
was again regressing and the limestone was replaced by the S m o k y
Hill Chalk.
As mentioned earlier, the chalk was deposited over a period of
about five million years, between 87 and 82 mya. This period of
time includes the late C o n i a c i a n , all of the Santonian and the early
Campanian. By the early C a m p a n i a n , sea levels were still dropping
and the chalk was replaced by the Sharon Springs M e m b e r of the
Pierre Shale. In K a n s a s , there are indications that the western por-
tion of the chalk may have been raised above sea level for a brief
time. When the sea returned, a dark gray shale was deposited
through most of the rest of the C a m p a n i a n . T h e geological forces
lifting the R o c k y M o u n t a i n s , however, were also lifting much of
the Great Plains to the east. At some point before the end of the
Cretaceous, Kansas rose above the sea for the last time and the sea
bottom was exposed to the forces of nature. Over the last 70 mil-
lion years or so, surface erosion has removed much of the upper
Pierre Shale in Kansas, and the geological record of the Western In-
terior Sea ends in the state well before the end of the Cretaceous.
W h a t remains, however, is one of the best records that we
know of concerning the marine life that flourished in the oceans of
Kansas. In the following pages, I will discuss the fossil discoveries
which have occurred during the last 1 3 0 years in the rocks covering
the western third of Kansas (Fig. 1.3). K a n s a s was very different
during the 1 8 7 0 s , and paleontology was as much an adventure as it
was a scientific pursuit. T h e fossils that were found there were new
to science and generated an intense interest in paleontology that
continues today. To me, the discovery of these fossils provides a
fascinating look at the strange creatures that lived and died in the
seas of the Late Cretaceous. T h e stories of their discovery and iden-
tification also provide an interesting view of the early years and the
growth of paleontology in the United States.

Introduction • 13
Two
Our Discovery of the
Western Interior Sea

W h e n Lewis and Clark set out in 1 8 0 4 on their westward trek to ex-

plore the Louisiana Purchase, they had no idea they would also be
crossing the expanse of an ancient ocean that once covered the mid-
dle of North America. It was early in the trip when they found the
only fossil from the collections made by the expedition that survives
today (Chapter 5 ) . Along the Missouri River, near the northwest
corner of what is now I o w a , they came across a fossil that Meri-
wether Lewis described in a note that is curated along with the spec-
imen as "the petrified jaw bone of a fish" (see Spamer et al., 2 0 0 0 ,
for a more detailed account). T h e chalk that is exposed along the
river in this area is not far from the Niobrara Formation further to
the west in South D a k o t a . T h e "fish j a w " of Meriwether Lewis was
eventually presented to the American Philosophical Society, where it
was studied and then misidentified some years later by Dr. Richard
Harlan ( 1 8 2 4 ) as the j a w of a new species of marine reptile, Sauro-
cephalus lanciformis. He believed it to be most closely related to the
marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs. Joseph Leidy ( 1 8 5 6 , p. 3 0 2 ) ,
however, noted that the specimen (ANSP 5 5 1 6 ) was a fragment of a
"maxillary bone with teeth, of a peculiar genus of sphyraenoid
fishes, from the cretaceous formation of the Upper Missouri."
 T h e journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition also tell of an-
other mysterious fossil. In 1 8 1 8 , Dr. Samuel Mitchell (p. 4 0 6 )
wrote, " W h a t shall we think of the genus and species of that petri-
fied skeleton of a very large fish, seen in the S i o u x county, up the
Missouri by Patrick Gass? In his J o u r n a l to the Pacific ocean with
Messrs. Lewis and Clark in 1 8 0 4 - 0 6 , he relates that it was forty-
five feet long and lay on top of a high cliff." As noted on a copy of
Clark's original map made years later for the M a x i m i l i a n - B o d m e r
western journey ( M o u l t o n , 1 9 8 3 - 1 9 9 7 , C l a r k - M a x i m i l i a n Sheet 9 ,
vol. 1 ) , the remains were discovered along a stretch of the Missouri
River in what is now northwest Gregory County, south-central
South D a k o t a , and probably c a m e from the Late Cretaceous Pierre
Shale. At least four members of the Lewis and Clark expedition
noted the discovery of the large skeleton in their journals on M o n -
day, September 1 0 , 1 8 0 4 (see M o u l t o n , 1 9 8 3 - 1 9 9 7 ) . Clark's de-
scription (ibid., vol. 3, p. 6 1 ) is perhaps the most complete:
" ( B j e l o w the Island on the top of a ridge we found a b a c k bone
with the most of the entire [length] laying Connected for 45 feet.
[TJhose bones are petrified, some teeth & ribs also c o n n e c t e d . "
J o h n Ordway (ibid., vol. 9, p. 5 7 ) described the remains simply as
"the rack of Bones of a verry [sic] large fish" while J o s e p h W h i t e -
house (ibid., vol. 1 1 , p. 7 2 ) wrote that they "saw lying on the
banks on the South side of the River, the Bones of a monstrous
large Fish, the back bone of which measured forty-five feet long."
Gass (ibid., vol. 1 0 , p. 3 8 ) also noted that "part of these bones
were sent to the City of W a s h i n g t o n . " While the bones they col-
lected and sent back to Washington were apparently lost, the de-
scription appears most likely to be that of a large mosasaur. M o u l -
ton (vol. 3, p. 6 3 ) indicated it may have been a plesiosaur
(elasmosaur?) but provided no further evidence in that regard.
Ten years after naming of Saurocephalus, Dr. Harlan misidenti-
fied fragments of another fossil from the Western Interior Sea. In
this instance, Harlan ( 1 8 3 4 , p. 4 0 5 ) noted that the remains had
been found by "a trader from the R o c k y mountains . . . [who] o b -
served, in a rock, the skeleton of an alligator-animal, about seventy
[?] feet in length; he broke off the point of the j a w as it projected,
and gave it to me. He said that the head part appeared to be about
three or four feet long." Ignoring the field observations of the fur
trader, just as he had those of Meriwether Lewis, Harlan decided
that the remains were those of an ichthyosaur and gave it the name
Ichthyosaurus Missouriensis. An examination of the accurately
drawn figure published with his paper clearly shows the fragment
to be the anterior end of the premaxillary from a mosasaur skull.
T h e mistake was noted relatively quickly by his contemporaries,
but that is only the beginning of the story.
F r o m this point onward, the tale becomes more complicated.
Several years later, an articulated skull, lower jaws, and vertebrae
of a strange beast (a mosasaur) were recovered from the same Big
Bend of the Missouri area in South D a k o t a . In this case, "articu-
lated" means that the bones of the skull of the mosasaur were still

Our Discovery of the Western Interior Sea • 15

Figure 2.1. The skull of
Mosasaurus Maximiliana as
published by Goldfuss (1845).
This skull was the first articulated
skull ever found of a mosasaur.
Note that the anterior ends of the
premaxilla and both dentaries are
missing from this specimen and
were described earlier by Dr.
Richard Harlan (1834) as the
remains of his mistaken
Ichthyosaurus missouriensis.

arranged in their original or natural positions. T h e remains came

into the possession of a government Indian Agent named M a j o r
Benjamin O ' F a l l o n and were displayed in the formal garden of his
h o m e in St. Louis (Goldfuss, 1 8 4 5 , p. 3 ) . T h e specimen eventually
attracted the attention of Prince M a x i m i l i a n zu Wied ( 1 7 8 2 - 1 8 6 7 )
during his travels through the American West from 1 8 3 2 to 1 8 3 4 ,
and he acquired the specimen. T h e prince shipped the specimen
b a c k to Germany, where a well-known naturalist, Dr. August Gold-
fuss, spent several years preparing and describing it. Although it
was encased in a hard limestone concretion, the skull was pre-
served fully articulated and uncrushed. In many respects, it was the
best e x a m p l e of a mosasaur skull found up until that time in terms
of understanding the construction of the mosasaur skull, much bet-
ter than the disarticulated specimen of Mosasaurus Hoffmanni
from the Netherlands. It was, however, missing the tips of the
lower jaws and the anterior end of the premaxilla (Fig. 2 . 1 ) . In
what was an excellent paper that was subsequently ignored by
m a n y other early w o r k e r s on mosasaurs, Goldfuss ( 1 8 4 5 ) de-
scribed the specimen completely and gave it the name Mosasaurus
Maximiliana in h o n o r of his benefactor.
Russell ( 1 9 6 7 ) noted that soon after the Goldfuss paper was in
printed in 1 8 4 5 , a letter from H e r m a n n von M e y e r to "Professor
B r o n n , " published in the G e r m a n journal Neues Jahrbuch fur Min-
eralogie, Geognosie, Geologie und Petrefaktenkunde, provided the
first mention that Harlan's " i c h t h y o s a u r " fragment was probably
the missing premaxilla of the Goldfuss mosasaur. Although the
Goldfuss skull is still in the collection of the Institut fiir Geologie
and Palaeontologie in B o n n , Germany, Harlan's fragments were
thought to be lost (Russell, 1 9 6 7 ) . In 2 0 0 4 , however, the missing
premaxilla was rediscovered quite unexpectedly by G o r d o n Bell
and M i k e Caldwell in Paris, F r a n c e , where it had been safely stored
for m o r e than 1 5 0 years (see Chapter 9 ) .
Harlan's legacy remains, however, because the name
"Mosasaurus Maximiliana Goldfuss 1 8 4 5 " is still the junior syn-

16 • Oceans of Kansas
onym of Mosasaums Missouriensis (Harlan, 1 8 2 4 ) . While it is un-
likely that Goldfuss will ever receive the credit he deserves for his
meticulous work on the first articulated skull of a mosasaur ever
found, Baur ( 1 8 9 2 ) did note that " i f this important paper had been
studied more carefully by subsequent writers [e.g., C o p e , M a r s h ,
and others], much confusion could have been spared. Williston
( 1 8 9 5 ) elaborated further on the subject when he said, "As Baur
has said, had later authorities studied this paper more attentively
they would not have claimed as new a number of discoveries made
and published long before, a m o n g which may be mentioned the po-
sition of the quadrate bone, the presence of the quadrato-parietal
and malar arches, and the sclerotic plates."
Following the American Civil War, the pace of westward e x -
pansion in the United States increased significantly. Gold had been
discovered in C o l o r a d o , and Denver was growing rapidly. C o m -
munication between Kansas City and Denver was largely by a
stagecoach and wagon freight line along the Butterfield Trail that
ran westward across the prairie through K a n s a s and eastern C o l -
orado. At about the same time, the Union Pacific portion of the
transcontinental railroad was being completed across N e b r a s k a ,
and a southern route, the Kansas Pacific, was being built from
Kansas City to Denver. Along with the settlers in this westward
expansion came survey crews and construction workers for the
railroads. T h e resulting e n c r o a c h m e n t on Indian lands in the West
resulted in conflicts and made it necessary for the government to
establish a military presence between K a n s a s City and Denver.
Several forts were built along the Butterfield Trail and elsewhere in
the western half of K a n s a s . Along with the troops and guns c a m e
military doctors w h o were arguably a m o n g the best-educated men
in Kansas at the time. F o r the period between 1 8 6 6 and 1 8 7 2 ,
three of these doctors were a m o n g the first fossil collectors and pa-
leontologists in Kansas.
Fort Harker was established originally in 1 8 6 6 as Fort
Ellsworth in central Kansas, near present-day Kanopolis, on the
trail to Denver and the eventual route of the Kansas Pacific rail-
road. Dr. George M. Sternberg ( 1 8 3 8 - 1 9 1 5 ) , older brother of the
Charles H. Sternberg w h o would later become famous as a fossil
hunter, was the military surgeon assigned to the fort. While Dr.
Sternberg would later be known for his w o r k in bacteriology and
as the Surgeon General of the Army during the Spanish-American
War, he also began routinely collecting fossils in western Kansas be-
fore anyone else. According to R o g e r s ( 1 9 9 1 , p. 1 3 0 ) , Dr. Stern-
berg's younger brother Charles credited him with alerting " O . C.
M a r s h , Joseph Leidy and other paleontologists to the existence of
Kansas's vast fossil beds, worthy of exploration. It was his brother
who made possible the first placement of Sternberg fossils in the
halls of the Smithsonian." Dr. Sternberg began by collecting fossil
leaves from the D a k o t a Sandstone (early Late Cretaceous) near
Fort Harker and then made significant collections of vertebrate fos-
sils from the S m o k y Hill Chalk and the Pierre Shale of western

Our Discovery of the Western Interior Sea • 17

Figure 2.2. Leidy's (1873, pi. 17)
figure of the large fin ray (USNM
52) discovered by Dr. George M.
Sternberg in western Kansas. It
was from this specimen that Leidy
(1870) named the giant teleost fish
Xiphactinus audax. The fin ray is
shown in dorsal and ventral view
and is approximately 40 cm (16
in.) in length.

K a n s a s while serving with General Sheridan's campaign against the

Indians from 1 8 6 8 to 1 8 7 0 . Almost all his specimens were donated
to the U. S. Army M e d i c a l M u s e u m in Washington, D . C . , and from
there were transferred to the Smithsonian (United States National
M u s e u m — U S N M ) . By my rough c o u n t during a visit in 2 0 0 1 , Dr.
Sternberg is attributed as the collector of more than thirty
m o s a s a u r specimens in the U S N M collection. He actually signed
his name to each bone in m o s t cases! He also discovered the large
fish fin (Fig. 2 . 2 ) that Leidy ( 1 8 7 0 ) described as the type specimen
for Xiphactinus audax. Cope ( 1 8 7 2 b ) later more fully described
and named the same fish from more complete specimens, but his
"Portheus molossus C o p e 1 8 7 2 " n a m e will always be the junior
synonym of Dr. Sternberg's discovery of Xiphactinus audax Leidy
1 8 7 0 (Chapter 5 ) .
Dr. Sternberg was also one of the first collectors of fossils from
the Pierre Shale in far western K a n s a s in 1 8 6 9 and 1 8 7 0 . However,
the first vertebrate fossil found in the Pierre Shale and the first
m a j o r C r e t a c e o u s vertebrate to be described from Kansas was the
type specimen of Elasmosaurus platyurus C o p e 1 8 6 8 which was
found by a n o t h e r Army surgeon in the spring of 1 8 6 7 . Dr.
Theophilus H. Turner ( 1 8 4 1 - 1 8 6 9 ) , the assistant surgeon at Fort
Wallace in western K a n s a s , discovered the remains of a very large
marine reptile eroding from a ravine in the Pierre Shale a b o u t
twelve miles northeast of the fort (Almy, 1 9 8 7 ) . Later that summer,
he gave three of the vertebrae to J o h n L e C o n t e , a m e m b e r of a
party that was in the process of surveying the route for the Union
Pacific railroad ( L e C o n t e , 1 8 6 8 ) . After the survey was completed,
L e C o n t e delivered the vertebrae to E. D. C o p e at the Academy of
Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP) in N o v e m b e r 1 8 6 7 . C o p e
immediately recognized them as belonging to a large plesiosaur and
wrote to Turner, asking him to procure the remainder of the speci-
men and send it to Philadelphia at the expense of the A N S P (Almy,
1 9 8 7 ) . W i t h the help of other soldiers at Fort Wallace, Turner re-
turned to the site in late D e c e m b e r 1 8 6 7 and secured some 9 0 0

18 • Oceans of Kansas
pounds of bones and m a t r i x . N e a r the end of February, 1 8 6 8 , at
the urging of C o p e , Turner arranged to transport the specimen by
military wagon train s o m e ninety miles east to where the approach-
ing Kansas Pacific railroad was being built. F r o m there, the remains
were shipped by rail to Philadelphia. C o p e received the crates c o n -
taining the specimen in M a r c h , e x a m i n e d the remains, and, as
would soon become the c u s t o m in his rivalry with O. C. M a r s h ,
hurriedly described and named the specimen. At the M a r c h 2 4 ,
1 8 6 8 meeting o f the Academy o f Natural Sciences o f Philadelphia
(ANSP), C o p e ( 1 8 6 8 a ) reported the discovery " o f a n animal related
to the Plesiosaurus" which he called Elasmosaurus platyurus. At
about the same time, a short note from C o p e ( 1 8 6 8 b ) , also includ-
ing the new n a m e , was published in L e C o n t e ' s ( 1 8 6 8 ) railroad sur-
vey report. T h e controversy that followed regarding the restoration
of Elasmosaurus with the head on the w r o n g end ( C o p e , 1 8 6 9 b )
completely overshadowed the fact that Dr. Turner had discovered
and successfully collected one of the largest vertebrate fossils
known at the time, under primitive conditions, and with no prior
experience (Fig. 2 . 3 ) . Turner certainly deserves m o r e recognition
for this feat than he has received so far (Chapter 7 ) .
T h e next major fossil to be reported from Kansas was a
mosasaur discovered in the S m o k y Hill C h a l k in western G o v e
County. Williston ( 1 8 9 8 a ) reported that the partial skull of the type
specimen of "Tylosaurus proriger C o p e [1869a] was collected by

Figure 2.3. A recent photograph

of the dorsal vertebra of the giant
plesiosaur Elasmosaurus platyurus
(ANSP 10081), discovered and
collected in western Kansas by Dr.
Theophilus Turner in 1867 and
figured by Cope (1869, pi. II).
The centrum of this vertebra is
about 12 cm (5 in.) across.

Our Discovery of the Western Interior Sea • 19

 Colonel Cunningham and Mr. M i n o r in the vicinity of M o n u m e n t
station [Gove C o u n t y ] , and sent by them to Prof. Louis Agassiz. T h e
locality is probably M o n u m e n t Station of the overland route, in the
vicinity of M o n u m e n t R o c k s , in the valley of the Smoky Hill River."
After becoming a state in 1 8 6 1 , Kansas established the Kansas
State Agricultural College (now Kansas State University) at M a n -
hattan in 1 8 6 3 . It was there that Professor Benjamin F. Mudge
( 1 8 1 7 - 1 8 7 9 ) began the first systematic collection of fossils from
the Western Interior Sea. Professor M u d g e ( 1 8 6 6 a ) reported on fos-
sil footprints he had collected in 1 8 6 5 from the D a k o t a Sandstone
(early Late Cretaceous) fifty miles north of J u n c t i o n City, Kansas.
M u d g e was also the first to note and publish ( 1 8 6 6 b ) the presence
of fossil leaves in the D a k o t a Sandstone, although at the time he
was unsure of their age or geological provenance. In a footnote,
L e C o n t e ( 1 8 6 8 , p. 7) indicates that "Professor M u d g e , of the
Kansas Geological Survey, has procured specimens from the same
locality." Lesquereux ( 1 8 6 8 ) credited B. F. Mudge for a collection
of leaf fossils from the D a k o t a Formation that he examined in the
Smithsonian for his publication " O n Some Cretaceous Fossil Plants
F r o m N e b r a s k a . " However, the fossil leaves were actually collected
by M u d g e from just north and east of Fort H a r k e r in Kansas, not
from near " F o r t Ellsworth in N e b r a s k a " as indicated by Les-
quereux.
According to Williston ( 1 8 9 8 a ) , Mudge's "first expedition, as I
remember, was up the Republican and Solomon rivers into the
wholly uninhabited region, the home then of the bison and roving
bands of marauding Indians. It was made shortly after the close of
the college year in 1 8 7 0 . " M u d g e sent many of his fossils to E. D.
C o p e in Philadelphia, giving C o p e the opportunity to name most of
the mosasaur species found in the S m o k y Hill Chalk even though
O. C. M a r s h was actually in Kansas first. After being fired from his
teaching j o b in 1 8 7 3 over a dispute with the administration,
M u d g e began collecting fossils for O. C. M a r s h and Yale College.
His discoveries include a toothed bird (Ichthyornis dispar), several
species of mosasaurs, and other important specimens that are now
in major museums in the United States, including at least 3 0 3 spec-
imens in the Yale Peabody M u s e u m collection.
Peterson ( 1 9 8 7 , p. 2 2 8 ) indicates that B. F. Mudge was the
" m o s t a c t i v e " of the early fossil collectors in Kansas. In 1 8 6 6 , he
went further west to the area around Ellsworth (near Fort Harker)
and near the fork of the S o l o m o n River to the north to collect in-
vertebrates and plant fossils. Peterson (ibid., pp. 2 2 8 - 2 2 9 ) said
that "[o]nly M u d g e is k n o w n to have done much fossil collecting in
1 8 6 9 , and he did not venture very far into western Kansas. During
the summer he went up the Republican River as far as the northern
state line where he found many fossil plants and other specimens to
add to the K S A C collection. In O c t o b e r , he accompanied Kansas
Senator Edmund Ross and t w o others on an expedition, with a mil-
itary escort, up the S o l o m o n River to visit troops stationed in the
area and to determine the valley's potential for agricultural and
railroad purposes. Mudge concentrated on soils and geology, in-
20 • Oceans of Kansas
eluding fossils, but also noted evidences of ancient Indian occupa-
tion. In what is n o w Phillips County, M u d g e found a number of
fossils in Cretaceous formations including the vertebrae and other
portions of an eight-foot saurian. Returning down the South
Solomon River, M u d g e noted much exposed magnesium limestone
but found fewer fossils. Although the results of this trip were not
spectacular, it was important for introducing M u d g e to the large,
well preserved fossils of new species awaiting discovery in western
Kansas."
In 1 8 7 0 , M u d g e collected fossils from the Cretaceous forma-
tions around Fort Wallace; the vertebrates he forwarded to C o p e in
Philadelphia and the invertebrates he sent to F. B. M e e k at the
Smithsonian (Peterson, 1 9 8 7 , pp. 2 2 9 - 2 3 0 ) . E . D . Cope's relation-
ship with Mudge was further solidified in 1 8 7 1 when C o p e visited
him at the state agricultural college and examined Mudge's collec-
tion of mosasaur and fish specimens ( C o p e , 1 8 7 2 a ) . C o p e ( 1 8 7 1 ,
p. 4 0 5 ; later figured in Cope, 1 8 7 5 , pi. 2 6 , fig. 3) also named a new
species of mosasaur (Liodon mudgei) in Mudge's h o n o r "in recog-
nition of the valuable results of his investigations as State geologist
of K a n s a s . " In his review of American mosasaurs, however, Russell
( 1 9 6 7 , pp. 1 8 1 - 1 8 2 ) considered L. mudgei to be Platecarpus
nomen vanum, either P. ictericus or P. coryphaeus.
Mudge continued to collect in 1 8 7 1 . According to Peterson
( 1 9 8 7 , p. 2 3 0 ) , M u d g e "went to western Kansas where he found
many more vertebrates. Although he kept specimens for the K S A C
cabinet [collection], he sent the best items to experts in the East for
identification and publication. T h e molluscs were sent to M e e k ,
most of the plant material to Lesquereux, and most of the verte-
brates to Cope. Louis Agassiz at Harvard and J a m e s D. D a n a at
Yale also received items. M a n y of Mudge's finds were published by
Cope and Lesquereux in the yearly report of the U. S. Geological
Survey of the Territories. His fossil plants of 1 8 7 1 included seven
new species, including one species of o a k that Lesquereux named
Quercus mudgeii." (See also Preliminary R e p o r t of the United
States Geological Survey of M o n t a n a and Portions of Adjacent Ter-
ritories Washington, 1 8 7 2 , pp. 3 0 1 - 3 0 4 ) .
" T h e collectors had another very productive year in 1 8 7 2 . Pro-
fessor Mudge again ventured north of the S m o k y Hill River. After
stopping near Hays where he found fossil shells and fish, he went
north to Smith County where he met the rest of his party—Prof.
G. C. Merrill of Washburn [University in T o p e k a , K a n s a s ] ; Prof.
P. H. Felker of Michigan Agricultural College; R. Warder of the In-
diana Geological Survey; and seven K S A C students. T h e y explored
the geology of the valleys of Prairie D o g Creek and several
branches of the S o l o m o n River and found many vertebrate fossils.
Later in the year, Mudge spent two weeks examining the geology of
the Arkansas River valley that became a subject for a paper he pre-
sented before the Kansas Academy of Science. In the Fall, he had
visits from both M a r s h and C o p e . It appears that he gave most of
his saurian fossils to Cope, w h o found fourteen new species a m o n g
them. T h e rarer birdlike fossils he passed to M a r s h . In July a third
Our Discovery of the Western Interior Sea • 21
 visitor was L e o Lesquereux, w h o spotted a number of new species
in Mudge's plant material. Lesquereux spent the summer examin-
ing plant fossils and sites in the West. On his way to the R o c k y
M o u n t a i n s , he stopped to collect fossil leaves at Fort Harker where
he met Charles Sternberg w h o thereafter sent all his plant material
t o L e s q u e r e u x " (Peterson, 1 9 8 7 , p . 2 3 1 ) .
Leidy ( 1 8 6 8 ) made a brief report to the Academy of Natural
Sciences of Philadelphia regarding the discovery and photographs
of a huge K a n s a s mosasaur. T h e recorded remarks (ibid., p. 3 1 6 )
are brief but enigmatic: "Dr. Leidy exhibited some photographs
of fossil b o n e s , received from M r . W. E. W e b b , S e c . [Secretary] of
the N a t i o n a l L a n d C o . , at T o p e k a , K a n s a s . T h e y represent verte-
b r a e , and fragments of the jaws with teeth of a skeleton of
Mosasaurus, reported by M r . W e b b to be a b o u t 70 feet in length,
recently discovered on the great plains of K a n s a s , near Fort Wal-
l a c e . " Stories regarding a huge but unverified mosasaur from
western K a n s a s are found in various other publications, including
Buffalo Land, W e b b ' s ( 1 8 7 2 ) semi-fictional a c c o u n t of early e x -
plorations o f the plains, and b y C o p e ( 1 8 7 2 c , p . 3 3 3 and 1 8 7 2 d ,
p. 2 7 9 ) . It is likely that the specimen is actually the type specimen
of Tylosaurus proriger first described by C o p e ( 1 8 6 9 a ) (and fig-
ured in C o p e , 1 8 7 0 ) from a specimen in the M u s e u m of C o m p a r -
ative Z o o l o g y . T h e remains were o b t a i n e d by Prof. Agassiz in his
trip t o western K a n s a s i n 1 8 6 8 (see Almy, 1 9 8 7 , p . 1 9 3 ) . C o p e
( 1 8 6 9 ) stated that the type specimen " b e l o n g e d to Prof. Agassiz"
and then noted ( 1 8 7 5 ) that the original description "was based on
material in the M u s e u m of C o m p a r a t i v e Z o o l o g y , Cambridge,
M a s s . , brought by Prof. Agassiz from the Cretaceous beds in the
n e i g h b o r h o o d of M o n u m e n t , K a n s . and near the line of the
K a n s a s Pacific R a i l r o a d . " N o t e here that the present-day location
of " M o n u m e n t , K a n s a s " is a b o u t twenty-five miles north-
northwest of the original M o n u m e n t station, which was located
on the Butterfield stage line near the S m o k y Hill River. W h e n the
railroad replaced the stage line in the early 1 8 7 0 s , the inhabitants
of the station moved to a t o w n site on the railroad line along with
s o m e of the buildings. Surrounded by miles of relatively flat
prairie that is n o w used for raising wheat and c o r n , there are no
Late C r e t a c e o u s marine fossils to found in or near present-day
M o n u m e n t , K a n s a s . A newspaper description of the town of
M o n u m e n t in the T o p e k a Weekly Leader (Anonymous, 1 8 6 8 )
does not paint a pretty picture of the living conditions at the time:
" T h e r e are twenty cloth houses at M o n u m e n t , besides the quar-
ters tents [U.S. Army] . . . [f]our s a l o o n s , t w o fruit stands, one
boarding house and news depot and post office. At M o n u m e n t is
a level plain as far as the eye c a n reach on either side. Twelve
miles westward is Sheridan, and yet seventeen further and you
reach F o r t W a l l a c e , where Harrison N i c h o l s keeps hotel. W e ' d
soon be in mid o c e a n in a wash-tub as in the centre of these plains
on foot."
W h i l e Kansas has often been suggested as the place where the
" B o n e W a r s " between E. D. C o p e and O. C. M a r s h began, it is
22 • Oceans of Kansas
more likely that their rivalry started over Cretaceous fossils being
found in N e w Jersey in the late 1 8 6 0 s . T h e competition and other
confrontations certainly intensified in Kansas during the early
1 8 7 0 s and then reached their peak further north and west with the
discovery of dinosaurs and giant m a m m a l s . M a r s h was the first of
the two men to collect fossils in Kansas in 1 8 7 0 , although by then
Cope had been the recipient of many specimens, including the giant
plesiosaur Elasmosaurus platyurus (Chapter 7) and the type speci-
men of Tylosaurus proriger, from various collectors in Kansas.
Marsh arrived in N o v e m b e r 1 8 7 0 and collected for t w o weeks near
Fort Wallace with his first Yale College scientific expedition. He re-
turned to Kansas with another expedition composed of Yale stu-
dents in the summer of 1 8 7 1 and collected many fossils from the
chalk. Cope's only visit to the state was in the fall of 1 8 7 1 . Al-
though M a r s h returned in 1 8 7 2 , both men would hire others to
collect for them on more or less a full-time basis. M a r s h hired Pro-
fessor B. F. Mudge to collect for him in K a n s a s in 1 8 7 3 . M u d g e
then recruited several of his students, including Samuel W. Willis-
ton, to help him in the field. Williston would go on to w o r k for
M a r s h at Yale for several years and would then return to the Uni-
versity of Kansas. C o p e , on the other hand, hired a young Charles
H. Sternberg as his man in Kansas. While initially at a disadvantage
due to the superior knowledge and experience of Marsh's collec-
tors, Sternberg would become a well-recognized supplier of fossils
for museums all over the world. His sons, George F., Levi, and
Charles M. Sternberg would later go on to careers in paleontology
of their own, with George eventually returning to Kansas to con-
tinue the exploration of the Cretaceous and Tertiary deposits in the
state. George settled in Hays and began collecting fossils for what
would later become the Sternberg M u s e u m of Natural History at
Fort Hays State University (originally Kansas State Teachers C o l -
lege).

Stratigraphy
One of the important issues that will surface again and again in
this b o o k is the lack of stratigraphic information on the occurrence
of most of the fossils that have been collected from the S m o k y Hill
Chalk. In this usage, "stratigraphic o c c u r r e n c e " refers to what ap-
proximate chronological level the fossil was found within the 2 0 0 -
m (600-ft.) chalk unit. As noted earlier, this chalk was deposited in
the Western Interior Sea over a period of about five million years.
Fossils found near the b o t t o m of the chalk are millions of years
older than those found near the top. K n o w i n g the ages of speci-
mens is useful in understanding when species appeared and when
they became extinct, and what ecological relationships may have
existed. Relatively few of the fossil remains collected since 1 8 7 0
have even good locality data, let alone stratigraphic information.
While this may not seem t o o important at first, it means that we
cannot establish when the animal lived in relation to other remains
that we find in the chalk. This certainly limits the usefulness of any
Our Discovery of the Western Interior Sea • 23
fossil in the study of the ecosystem of the Western Interior Sea.
Even though an accurate frame of reference for locating fossils
within the five-million-year depositional period of the chalk has
been in place since Hattin ( 1 9 8 2 ) , few people are aware of it and
fewer use it in the field.
T h e geology of western Kansas was not well understood when
most of the early collecting was done. According to Zakrzewski
( 1 9 9 6 ) , geological studies of the western interior of the United
States had begun as early as the 1 8 5 0 s , but had proceeded slowly
and sporadically. M e e k and Hayden ( 1 8 6 1 ) first referred to the
chalk and limestone strata as the Niobrara Division in their descrip-
tion of exposures along the Missouri River near the mouth of the
Niobrara River in N e br as ka. In Kansas, these Upper Cretaceous
strata were referred to simply as the " N i o b r a r a " by the geologists
and paleontologists of the day (Hattin, 1 9 8 2 ) . E. D. Cope ( 1 8 7 2 a )
wrote the earliest substantial account of vertebrate fossils from the
" N i o b r a r a B e d s . " T h o u g h he described the geology of the chalk and
each of the various species in some detail, he made no attempt to de-
lineate their stratigraphic occurrence within the formation.
In 1 8 8 9 , the University Geological Survey of Kansas, which
eventually became the Kansas Geological Survey, was established
by the state legislature. Samuel W. Williston was appointed to the
faculty of the University of Kansas the following year. These two
events provided the basis for much of the early progress that was to
be made in the study of geology and paleontology in Kansas. At the
time, even reaching an agreement on what to name the formations
that cropped out in the western part of the state was no easy mat-
ter. M o s t of the early terminology used to describe the Smoky Hill
Chalk was based on the occurrence of the predominant fossils and
added little stratigraphic information to individual specimens. T h e
" N i o b r a r a Division" of M e e k and Hayden ( 1 8 6 1 ) was made up of
two distinct units, a lower limestone member and an upper chalk
member. Logan ( 1 8 9 7 ) was the first to call the upper chalk member
" T h e Pteranodon B e d s " in apparent recognition of the abundance
of well-preserved Pteranodon material that had been discovered
there (Chapter 1 0 ) . T h a t same year, demonstrating his support for
Logan's descriptive terminology, Williston ( 1 8 9 7 ) further divided
the Pteranodon Beds into the lower Rudistes Beds and the upper
Hesperornis Beds, providing essentially the first biostratigraphic
subdivisions of what was to become the Smoky Hill Chalk.
Williston ( 1 8 9 7 ) briefly discussed the stratigraphic occurrence
of mosasaurs in the Pteranodon Beds for the first time. He also
made the observation that Clidastes does not occur in the lower
Rudistes Beds, indicating that other genera (Platecarpus and Ty-
losaurus) probably occurred within 1 0 0 feet of the contact of the
chalk with the underlying Fort Hays Limestone. Williston (ibid.,
p. 2 4 5 ) was certainly aware of the lack of good stratigraphic data
for N i o b r a r a vertebrate fossils when he wrote, "I need not call the
attention of future collectors to the importance of locating the hori-
zon of specimens more accurately than has been done heretofore."
 Williston ( 1 8 9 8 b ) also published the first comprehensive de-
scription of the systematics and comparative a n a t o m y of
mosasaurs from the S m o k y Hill C h a l k , and he discussed their
range and distribution in comparison with specimens discovered
earlier in N e w Zealand and Europe. He c o m m e n t e d that Ty-
losaums, "so far as was k n o w n , begins near the lower part of the
Niobrara [Smoky Hill C h a l k ] and terminates at its close or in the
beginning of the Fort Pierre [Pierre S h a l e ] . " Of Platecarpus, he
stated that the species on which the genus is based are " k n o w n
nowhere outside of Kansas and C o l o r a d o , and are here restricted
exclusively to the N i o b r a r a . " He again concluded that the lowest
horizon of Clidastes "is the upper part of the N i o b r a r a in K a n s a s . "
It was not until after the turn of the twentieth century that the
exploration for oil and gas in western Kansas enabled rapid ad-
vances in understanding the geology of the entire N i o b r a r a F o r m a -
tion. According to Hattin ( 1 9 8 2 ) , M o o r e and Hays ( 1 9 1 7 ) were the
first to regard the Kansas N i o b r a r a as a formation and the first to
give member status to the currently recognized divisions, the Fort
Hays Limestone and the Smoky Hill C h a l k .
Russell ( 1 9 6 7 ) reviewed mosasaur specimens in the Yale Pea-
body collection and suggested that the Smoky Hill Chalk could be
divided into a lower, Clidastes liodontus-Platecarpus coryphaeus-
Tylosaurus nepaeolicus zone and an upper, Clidastes propython-
Platecarpus ictericus-Tylosaurus proriger zone. He also suggested
that the increased abundance of Clidastes specimens in the upper
portion of the chalk was an indication of a gradual change from a
mid-ocean to a near-shore environment. Russell ( 1 9 7 0 ) noted signif-
icant differences between the distribution of mosasaur species in the
Smoky Hill Chalk compared to the Gulf Coast species occurring in
the Selma Formation of Alabama. In his initial paper concerning the
biostratigraphy of the Smoky Hill Chalk, Stewart ( 1 9 8 8 ) stated that
he was aware of several exceptions to Russell's stratigraphic distribu-
tion of mosasaurs in the Smoky Hill Chalk that caused him to regard
it with "a degree of skepticism."
It was only after Hattin ( 1 9 8 2 ) published his composite meas-
ured section of the Smoky Hill C h a l k that significant progress
could be made in understanding the vertebrate biostratigraphy of
this formation. Hattin used bentonites and other geological fea-
tures to delineate his twenty-three lithologic marker units, and he
divided the chalk into five biostratigraphic zones based on the o c -
currence of invertebrate species. In doing so, he provided field
workers with the first dependable method of determining their
stratigraphic location in the section.
Stewart ( 1 9 8 8 ) used the distribution of the fish genus Proto-
sphyraena to further delineate biostratigraphic zones in the S m o k y
Hill Chalk. Stewart ( 1 9 9 0 ) then incorporated Hattin's marker units
as upper and lower boundaries for his six proposed biostrati-
graphic zones (Table 2 . 1 ) . This report provided the first compre-
hensive description of the distribution of k n o w n invertebrate and
vertebrate species in the N i o b r a r a F o r m a t i o n and was the first at-

Our Discovery of the Western Interior Sea • 25

 TABLE 2 . 1 .
Biostratigraphy of the Smoky Hill Chalk (adapted from Hattin, 1982; Stewart, 1990; Everhart,
2 0 0 1 ) . Time (MYA = Millions of Years Ago) and boundaries as indicated by Hattin's (1982)
marker units (MU) are approximate. The Smoky Hill Chalk Member of the Niobrara Chalk was
deposited between 87 and 82 million years ago. Note that the Late Coniacian is unequally divided
into two zones: a lower zone (P. pemiciosa) from the base of the chalk to about MU 5 and a brief
upper zone (Spinaptycbus n. sp).

Age Marker Units MYA Biostratigraphic zone of:

Early Campanian MU 16 to MU 23 83--82 Hesperornis
Late Santonian MU 11 to MU 16 84-83 Spinaptychus Sternberg!
Middle Santonian MU 8 to M U 1 1 85--84 Clioscaphites vertniformis and C. choteauensis
Early Santonian MU 6 to MU 8 86--85 Cladoceramus undulatoplicatus
Late Coniacian Base to MU 6 87--86 Protosphyraena pemiciosa I Spinaptychus n. sp.

tempt to assign specific stratigraphic ranges for mosasaur species

within the Smoky Hill C h a l k . Even with the substantial improve-
ments over previous attempts, Stewart believed that his biostratig-
raphy was flawed by the lack of reliable stratigraphic data for even
those specimens collected during the previous twenty years. He
stated that his framework was "submitted in the hopes that other
researchers will test it and improve upon it." M o r e recently, publi-
cations on the stratigraphic occurrence of mosasaurs in the Smoky
Hill C h a l k (Schumacher, 1 9 9 3 ; Sheldon, 1 9 9 6 ; Everhart 2 0 0 1 )
have benefited from the framework provided by Hattin ( 1 9 8 2 ) and
Stewart ( 1 9 9 0 ) . M o s t other papers regarding specimens from the
chalk published since 1 9 9 0 have generally included accurate strati-
graphic information.
Even though fossils have been collected from the Smoky Hill
C h a l k for m o r e than 1 3 0 years, there is still additional collecting
and describing to be done. A number of new species have been dis-
covered in the past fifteen years and there are probably others that
will be found in the future. In addition, many species that were dis-
covered and/or named by early workers need better specimens and
stratigraphic information if we are to fully understand their occur-
rence and significance in the Western Interior Sea.

Recommended Reading about Early Paleontologists

and Kansas Fossils
Edward D. Cope ( 1 8 4 0 - 1 8 9 7 )
Davidson, J. P. 1997. The Bone Sharp. Philadelphia: The Academy of Nat-
ural Sciences of Philadelphia. 2 3 7 pp.
Osborn, H. E 1 9 3 1 . Cope: Master Naturalist. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press. 740 pp. (Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1978.)

Oceans of Kansas
Joseph Leidy ( 1 8 2 3 - 1 8 9 1 )
Warren, L. 1998. The Last Man Who Knew Everything. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press. 320 pp.

Othniel C . Marsh ( 1 8 3 1 - 1 8 9 9 )
Schuchert, C, and C. M. LeVene. 1940. O. C. Marsh—Pioneer in Paleon-
tology. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 541 pp.

Benjamin F. Mudge ( 1 8 1 7 - 1 8 7 9 )
Peterson, J. M. 1987. "Science in Kansas: The Early Years, 1 8 0 4 - 1 8 7 5 . "
Kansas History Magazine 10(3): 2 0 1 - 2 4 0 .

Charles H. Sternberg ( 1 8 5 0 - 1 9 4 3 ) and George F. Sternberg

(1883-1969)
Liggett, G. A. 2 0 0 1 . Dinosaurs to Dung Beetles: Expeditions Through
Time. Guide to the Sternberg Museum of Natural History. Sternberg
Museum of Natural History, Hays, Kansas, 127 pp.
Rogers, K. 1991. A Dinosaur Dynasty: The Sternberg Fossil Hunters. Mis-
soula, Mont.: Mountain Press Publishing Company. 288 pp.
Sternberg, C. H. 1 9 0 9 . The Life of a Fossil Hunter. New York: Henry Holt
and Company. (Reprint, Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1990.)

George Miller Sternberg ( 1 8 3 8 - 1 9 1 5 )

Sternberg, M. L. George Miller Sternberg: A Biography. Chicago: Ameri-
can Medical Association. 331 pp., 10 pis.

Samuel W. Williston ( 1 8 5 1 - 1 9 1 8 )
Shor, E . N . 1971. Fossils and Flies: The Life of a Compleat Scientist—
Samuel Wendell Williston, 1851-1918. Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press. 2 8 5 pp.

Our Discovery of the Western Interior Sea • 27

Three
Invertebrates, Plants,
and Trace Fossils

Little of the bright sunlight above ever reached the b o t t o m of the

Western Interior Sea. However, the steady rain of organic detritus
from the plankton and other organisms in the water column sup-
ported an unusual a b u n d a n c e of life on the soft, muddy sea floor.
Huge, flat clams called inoceramids literally covered the b o t t o m ,
nearly edge to edge in many places, and if the scene had been visi-
ble to the eyes of a human visitor, it would have stretched outward
in all directions for mile after m o n o t o n o u s mile. Life had been
g o o d for these strange animals for many thousands of years now,
because the sluggish circulation pattern of the shallow sea over-
head brought just enough food and oxygen to the b o t t o m to sup-
ply their meager needs. It wasn't always so, and the oxygen levels
would decrease time and again, killing most of the strange forms
living in the nearly total darkness that enveloped the limey mud
surface. Layer after layer of the flattened shells of previous genera-
tions were hidden below the surface. T h e surrounding mud was
made up mostly of untold billions of dead shells from the micro-
organisms that formed the base of the food chain that prospered
several hundred feet overhead in the sunlit waters near the surface.
Living in a precarious b a l a n c e , invertebrate life on the b o t t o m
came and went in irregular pulses measuring hundreds of thou-
sands of years.
T h e animals living here on the b o t t o m weren't picky a b o u t
their food. M o s t were filter feeders, continuously moving large
quantities of seawater through their various feeding mechanisms to
remove small bits of whatever happened to be suspended near
them. Over many millions of years, inoceramid clams had evolved
into larger and larger forms, eventually reaching a m a x i m u m diam-
eter of nearly 1.5 m (5 ft.). W h e t h e r this increase in size provided
them with more surface area for their huge gills in a low-oxygen
environment or a m o r e efficient system for filtering bits of food out
of the water is unknown. W h a t is k n o w n is that their large, flat
shells literally covered the b o t t o m at times, they provided the only
available hard substrate for many other animals to colonize, and in
some cases they provided a shelter in which to hide.
M o s t of the inoceramids were covered with a layer of oysters
packed edge to edge; frequently, several generations of oysters lived
together, attached to the empty shells of the previous occupants of
that space. T h e r e was little diversity a m o n g the major invertebrates
on the sea b o t t o m ; the giant clams and their attached oysters made
up most of the biomass. Smaller epizoans lived wherever they could
find an attachment point. A few, mostly solitary rudists lived in
heavy, funnel-shaped shells set deep in the mud. T h e y were, h o w -
ever, at the extreme north end of their preferred range and were
never found here in large numbers. In w a r m e r waters to the south,
they were colonial reef builders.
An observer standing on the sea floor would have initially been
able to see little in the surrounding darkness. As the watcher's eyes
adjusted to the darkness, tiny motes of colored light may have be-
c o m e visible, and appeared to float or dart around unattached to a
recognizable life form. As in modern oceans, it is likely that many
forms had evolved bioluminescence as a means of attracting prey or
a mate. T h e squid and their shelled cousins the ammonites that
lived in these dark waters probably had such faint markings.
Schools of small fish sheltered in and around the open shells of
the larger bivalves covering the sea floor. Rarely, there were small,
deep-bodied fish called pycnodonts (Chapter 5) that nibbled at the
variety of smaller invertebrates growing on the oyster-encrusted
larger shells. An o c c a s i o n a l mud-grubbing ptychodontid shark
would emerge from the gloom as it searched for the smaller,
thinner-shelled clams a m o n g the larger ones.

Other than c o c c o l i t h o p h o r e s (a single-celled kind of golden-

brown algae), coccoliths (the disk-shaped, calcite " s c a l e s " that sur-
round each algal cell), and the fecal pellets (compacted waste prod-
ucts of animals that fed on the coccolithophores) that c o m p o s e the
bulk of the chalk itself, the most c o m m o n biological remains pre-
served in the chalk are the shells of larger invertebrates. In some
areas, especially in the lower c h a l k , it is impossible to walk across
an exposure without stepping on numerous fragments of giant in-

Invertebrates, Plants, and Trace Fossils • 29

oceramids and oysters. L o o s e bits and pieces of shell occur in layers
that accumulate and blanket the surface in some areas because they
are more resistant to erosion than the chalk that surrounds them.
In that regard, they can easily confuse both the novice and the e x -
pert alike, appearing in odd shapes and textures which mimic the
bones, and especially the j a w s , of vertebrates. In the years I have
collected in the chalk, I am sure I've picked up thousands of shell
fragments just to be sure I wasn't missing something more impor-
tant.
T h e first Cretaceous fossils reported from western Kansas were
actually not those of invertebrates or vertebrates. T h e y were in-
stead the imprints of the leaves of deciduous trees found in the
D a k o t a Sandstone north and west of Salina. While the D a k o t a is
now recognized as being deposited in the early part of the Late Cre-
taceous, its age was confusing to the early geologists w h o were e x -
ploring in wilds of Kansas and N e b r a s k a . H a w n ( 1 8 5 8 ) had ini-
tially indicated that the darkly stained D a k o t a sandstones were of
Triassic age, but M e e k and Hayden ( 1 8 5 9 ) countered that sugges-
tion with the report of the discovery of fossil leaves which came
from trees unknown earlier than the Cretaceous. T h e i r source
(ibid.), Dr. J. S. Newberry, an "authority on fossil botany," noted
that "they include so many highly organized plants, that were there
not a m o n g them several genera exclusively Cretaceous, I should be
disposed to refer them to a more recent era. . . . A single glance is
sufficient to satisfy any one they are not T r i a s s i c . "
B. F. M u d g e ( 1 8 6 6 ) also noted the presence of fossil leaves in
the D a k o t a Sandstone (Late Cretaceous) found in north central
K a n s a s . At the time, however, he was unsure of their age. J o h n
L e C o n t e ( 1 8 6 8 ) described the geography/geology of Kansas in his
survey report for the Union Pacific railroad and noted a bed of
rocks [the D a k o t a Sandstone] that "continue to Fort Harker, where
the sandstone becomes less ferruginous, of a reddish and pale yel-
low color, and contains leaves of trees of exogenous [trees that
g r o w annual rings] g r o w t h . " He also indicated that a collection
had been made there in N o v e m b e r of 1 8 6 6 and sent to Leo Les-
quereux ( 1 8 0 6 - 1 8 9 9 ) for e x a m i n a t i o n .
It is quite likely that some of these leaf imprints were also col-
lected and sent to the U . S . Army Medical M u s e u m in Washington,
D . C . , by Dr. George M. Sternberg, the surgeon at Fort Harker.
Sternberg collected many fossils while serving with the U.S. Army
in K a n s a s , but he kept few field notes. However, he did write that
"the bluffs north and east of the fort (Fort Harker) are composed
of a recent red sandstone [the D a k o t a Sandstone] which contains
the impressions of the leaves of trees of existing species (oak, ash,
willow, e t c . ) " (Sternberg, 1 9 2 0 , p . 1 2 ) .
In a f o o t n o t e , L e C o n t e ( 1 8 6 8 , p. 7) indicated that "Professor
M u d g e , of the K a n s a s Geological Survey, has procured specimens
from the same locality." T h a t same year, Lesquereux credited B. F.
M u d g e for a collection of leaf fossils from the D a k o t a F o r m a t i o n
that he e x a m i n e d in the Smithsonian for his 1 8 6 8 publication,
even though he had the locality confused. T h e title of the paper,
" O n S o m e C r e t a c e o u s Fossil Plants F r o m N e b r a s k a , " w a s mis-
leading since the fossil leaves were actually collected by M u d g e
from a few miles north and east of F o r t H a r k e r (present-day K a -
nopolis) in K a n s a s , and n o t from near " F o r t Ellsworth in N e -
b r a s k a . " T h e collection is mentioned again by H a y d e n ( 1 8 7 3 ,
p . 2 6 6 ) : "Species o f sweet-gum, poplar, willow, birch, beech, o a k ,
sassafras, tulip-tree, m a g n o l i a , maple and others have been de-
scribed from the fossils."
T h o u s a n d s of fossil leaves were collected, particularly by
Charles Sternberg, and sent to museums around the world. Stern-
berg's collecting localities near Fort Harker, however, are still some-
thing of a mystery and in any case are certainly located on private
land. Fossil leaves are found occasionally in road cuts and other e x -
posures. Years ago I did visit one locality west of Salina in a r o c k y
pasture where just a b o u t every piece of sandstone I picked up had
an impression of at least one leaf.
L e C o n t e ( 1 8 6 8 ) was certainly one of the first to mention inver-
tebrates from western K a n s a s , listing fourteen " n e w " species from
the K i o w a Shale (?) just west of Salina as he started his survey for
the Union Pacific railroad. T h e n from the " c l a y and l i m e s t o n e "
(probably the G r e e n h o r n F o r m a t i o n ) near present-day Bunker Hill
in Russell County, he found "a Belemnite not described and Inoce-
ramus problematicus," along with shark teeth and vertebrae. Fur-
ther west, he noted a thin bed of oysters (Pseudoperna congesta)
and "many teeth of fish and s h a r k s . " Several days later, still travel-
ing west, he found fragments of "gigantic Inocerami" in the lower
Smoky Hill C h a l k .

Figure 3.1. A dense growth of

oysters (Tseudoperna congesta,)
covers the outside of the lower
(left) valve of a Volviceramus
grandis inoceramid from Ellis
County, Kansas.

Invertebrates, Plants, and Trace Fossils • 31

 In his Notes on the Tertiary and Cretaceous Periods of Kansas,
M u d g e ( 1 8 7 6 ; 1 8 7 7 ) mentions that the fossils of the Fort Hays
Limestone include "Inocerami, fragments of Haploscapha
[Volviceramus grandis (Fig. 3 . 1 ) ] , Ostrea, with occasional remains
of fish and Saurians." Of mollusks in the " N i o b r a r a proper," he
noted that the " m o s t c o m m o n are Ostrea congesta and Inoceramus
problematicus. Less c o m m o n but still seen in many strata, are the
fragments of the large Haploscapha [Platyceramus platinus], with
occasionally a perfect specimen from 30 to 33 inches in length. It is
thin, with a transverse fiber like the Inocerami, and always lies
crushed flat in numerous fragments, but lying in their normal posi-
tion. A few Gryphea; also fragments, frequently weighing ten
pounds or more of a large Hippurites near H. Toncasianus [the
rudist, Durania maxima]. Near Sheridan, we discovered a bed of
Baculites ovatus."
According to Williston ( 1 8 9 7 ) , the Baculites found by Mudge
would have been from the Pierre Shale F o r m a t i o n , a geological di-
vision that had not been identified in western Kansas during
Mudge's time. Elias ( 1 9 3 3 ) and Gill et al. ( 1 9 7 2 ) provide the most
recent information regarding the occurrence of invertebrates in the
Pierre Shale of western Kansas. M o r e recently, limestone concre-
tions containing large numbers of Baculites maclearni have been
collected from an exposure of the Sharon Springs M e m b e r of the
Pierre Shale near M c A l l as t er Butte in northwestern Logan County
(pers. o b s . ) . T h e y are also found preserved fairly c o m m o n l y in the
layer of septarian concretions near the top of the Sharon Springs
Member.
Williston ( 1 8 9 7 ) noted that Ostrea congesta was much more
abundant in the "Rudistes B e d s " (lower chalk) than in the overly-
ing "Hesperornis B e d s " (upper c h a l k ) . It is worth noting here that
"Ostrea congesta," (Fig. 3 . 2 ) the species of oysters mentioned in

Figure 3.2. This close-up shows a

crowded community of oysters
(Tseudoperna congesta,) attached
to a Volviceramus grandis
fragment. It is easy to see where
the species name, "congesta," was
derived.

32 • Oceans of Kansas
several early accounts, was described and named by T. A. C o n r a d
( 1 8 0 3 - 1 8 7 7 ) . At the time, C o n r a d was recognized as an expert on
modern and fossil shells and had published numerous articles on
modern freshwater species from the northeastern United States.
T h e Cretaceous oysters and other specimens were collected during
a survey of the Missouri River by J. N. Nicollet, a French map-
maker working for the U . S . government. T h e name was published
as a footnote (Nicollet, 1 8 4 3 , p. 1 6 9 ) : " * C o n r a d ' s description of
the ostrea congesta: Elongated; upper valve flat; lower valve venti-
cose, irregular; the u m b o truncated by a m a r k of adhesion; resem-
bles a little gryphea vomer of M o r t o n . " Ostrea congesta was
placed in Pseudoperna by Stenzel in 1 9 7 1 . W h i l e the description
and publication of the name are not up to current standards, they
are accepted. T h e correct citation should be listed as Pseudoperna
congesta (Conrad, in Nicollet, 1 8 4 3 ) .
Williston ( 1 8 9 7 ) was the first to note that while "several
species of Inoceramus are found in all horizons, the Haploscaphas
(Volviceramus grandis) are abundant only in the lower horizons."
J. D. Stewart ( 1 9 9 0 ; pers. c o m m . , 1 9 9 2 ) indicated that V. grandis
becomes extinct in Kansas just below Hattin's ( 1 9 8 2 ) marker unit
6. This has been verified by the author several times at various lo-
calities over the years and it is useful as a stratigraphic marker. If
you cannot find pieces of the thick, heavy shells of V. grandis, you
are certainly above marker unit 6. As you move above Hattin's
( 1 9 8 2 ) marker unit 3, however, the shells are not as large and are
less likely to be preserved intact (pers. o b s . ) . Williston ( 1 8 9 7 ,
p. 2 4 1 ) goes on to say that on the S m o k y Hill River in Trego
County, near the mouth of H a c k b e r r y Creek, "there are places
where these shells can be gathered by the wagon load, often dis-
torted, but not rarely in extraordinary perfection. A very thin
shelled Inoceramid [Platyceramus platinus] measuring in the
largest specimens forty-four by forty-six or eight inches is not rare
over a large part of the exposures. Invariably where exposed, as
they sometimes are in their entirety on low flat mounds of shale,
they are broken into innumerable pieces. F o r that reason, I have
never k n o w n of one being collected complete or even partially
complete. N o t withstanding their great size, the shell substance is
not more than an eighth of an inch in thickness. Fragments of Rud-
istes [Durania maxima] are not rare in some places in the lower-
most horizons and I have seen specimens near the Saline River
northwest of Fort Hays into which one could thrust his arm to the
elbow. They are totally wanting in the Hesperornis beds."
Williston's biostratigraphic observations regarding the occur-
rence of invertebrates are particularly interesting because they are
quite accurate even after a hundred years and have served as the
basis for more recent work by Stewart ( 1 9 9 0 ) , Everhart ( 2 0 0 1 ) ,
and others. Thin-shelled Platyceramus platinus bivalves are found
throughout the Smoky Hill C h a l k , reaching the 1.2 m ( 4 8 in.) size
noted by Williston and other early collectors at a b o u t the midpoint
of the formation (middle Santonian). T h e smaller diameter ( 6 0 cm

Invertebrates, Plants, and Trace Fossils • 33

Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
become emphatically the land of tin, or the country for making
money.
The first inhabitants of the island lived by pasture, and not by
trade. They as yet knew nothing of the till, but supported
themselves by tillage. Their dress was picturesque rather than
elegant. A book of truly British fashions would be a great curiosity in
the present day, and we regret that we have no Petit Courier des
Druides, or Celtic Belle Assemblée, to furnish figurines of the
costume of the period. Skins, however, were much worn, for
morning as well as for evening dress; and it is probable that even at
that early age ingenuity may have been exercised to suggest new
patterns for cow cloaks and other varieties of the then prevailing
articles of the wardrobe.
The Druids, who were the priests, exercised great ascendancy
over the people, and often claimed the spoils of war, together with
other property, under the plea of offering up the proceeds as a
sacrifice to the divinities. These treasures, however, were never
accounted for; and it is now too late for the historians to file, as it
were, a bill in equity to inquire what has become of them.
Cæsar, who might have been so called from his readiness to seize
upon everything, now turned his eyes and directed his arms upon
Britain. According to some he was tempted by the expectation of
finding pearls, which he hoped to get out of the oysters, and he
therefore broke in upon the natives with considerable energy.
 Original Size

Whatever Caesar looking for the Pearls for which Britain was
formerly celebrated, may have been Caesar's motives the fact is
pretty well ascertained, that at about ten o'clock one fine morning in
August—some say a quarter past—he reached the British coast with
12,000 infantry, packed in eighty vessels. He had left behind him the
whole of his cavalry—the Roman horse-marines—who were detained
by contrary winds on the other side of the sea, and though anxious
to be in communication with their leader, they never could get into
the right channel. At about three in the afternoon, Cæsar having
taken an early dinner, began to disembark his forces at a spot called
to this day the Sandwich Flats, from the people having been such
flats as to allow the enemy to effect a landing. While the Roman
soldiers were standing shilly-shallying at the side of their vessels, a
standard-bearer of the tenth legion, or, as we should call him, an
ensign in the tenth, jumped into the water, which was nearly up to
his knees, and addressing a claptrap to his comrades as he stood in
the sea, completely turned the tide in Caesar's favour. After a severe
shindy on the shingles, the Britons withdrew, leaving the Romans
masters of the beach, where Cæsar erected a marquee for the
accommodation of his cohorts. The natives sought and obtained
peace, which had no sooner been concluded, than the Roman horse-
marines were seen riding across the Channel. A tempest, however,
arising, the horses were terrified, and the waves beginning to
mount, added so much to the confusion, that the Roman cavalry
were compelled to back to the point they started from. The same
storm gave a severe blow to the camp of Cæsar, on the beach,
dashing his galleys and transports against the rocks which they were
sure to split upon. Daunted by these disasters, the invaders, after a
few breezes with the Britons, took advantage of a favourable gale to
return to Gaul, and thus for a time the dispute appeared to have
blown over.
Cæsar's thoughts, however, still continued to run in one, namely,
the British, Channel. In the spring of the ensuing year, he rigged out
800 ships, into which he contrived to cram 32,000 men, and with
this force he was permitted to land a second time by those horrid
flats at Sandwich. The Britons for some time made an obstinate
resistance in their chariots, but they ultimately took a fly across the
country, and retreated with great rapidity. Cæsar had scarcely sat
down to breakfast the next morning when he heard that a tempest
had wrecked all his vessels. At this intelligence he burst into tears,
and scampered off to the sea coast, with all his legions in full cry,
hurrying after him.
 Original Size

The news of the disaster turned out to be no exaggeration, for

there were no penny-a-liners in those days; and, having carried his
ships a good way inland, where they remained like fish out of water,
he set out once more in pursuit of the enemy. The Britons had,
however, made the most of their time, and had found a leader in the
person of Gassivelaunus, alias Caswallon, a quarrelsome old Gelt,
who had so frequently thrashed his neighbours, that he was thought
the most likely person to succeed in thrashing the Romans. This
gallant individual was successful in a few rough off handed
engagements; but when it came to the fancy work, where tactics
were required, the disciplined Roman troops were more than a
match for him. His soldiers having been driven back to their woods,
he drove himself back in his chariot to the neighbourhood of
Chertsey, where he had a few acres of ground, which he called a
Kingdom. He then stuck some wooden posts in the middle of the
Thames, as an impediment to Cæsar, who, in the plenitude of his
vaulting ambition, laid his hands on the posts and vaulted over
them.
 The army of Cassivelaunus being now disbanded, his
establishment was reduced to 4000 chariots, which he kept up for
the purpose of harassing the Romans. As each chariot required at
least a pair of horses, his 4000 vehicles, and the enormous stud they
entailed, must have been rather more harassing to Cassivelaunus
himself than to the enemy.
This extremely extravagant Celt, who had long been the object of
the jealousy of his neighbours, was now threatened by their
treachery. The chief of the Trinobantes, who lived in Middlesex, and
were perhaps the earliest Middlesex magistrates, sent ambassadors
to Cæsar, promising submission. They also showed him the way to
the contemptible cluster of houses which Cassivelaunus dignified
with the name of his capital. It was surrounded with a ditch, and a
rampart made chiefly of mud, the article in which military
engineering seemed to have stuck at that early period.
Cassivelaunus was driven by Cæsar from his abode, constructed of
clay and felled trees, and so precipitate was the flight of the Briton,
that he had only time to pack up a few necessary articles, leaving
everything else to fall into the hands of the enemy.
The Roman General, being tired of his British campaign, was glad
to listen to the overtures of Cassivelaunus; but these overtures
consisted of promissory notes, which were never realised. The Celt
undertook to transmit an annual tribute to Cæsar, who never got a
penny of the money; and the hostages he had carried with him to
Gaul became a positive burden to him, for they were never taken
out of pawn by their countrymen. It is believed that they were
ultimately got rid of at a sale of unredeemed pledges, where they
were put up in lots of half a dozen, and knocked down as slaves to
the highest bidder.

Before quitting the subject of Caesar's invasion, it may be

interesting to the reader to know something of the weapons with
which the early Britons attempted to defend themselves. Their
swords were made of copper, and generally bent with the
first blow, which must have greatly straitened their
aggressive resources, for the swords thus followed their own
bent, instead of carrying out the intentions of the persons Origin
using them. This provoking pliancy of the material must al Size
often have made the soldier as ill-tempered as his own
weapon. The Britons carried also a dirk, and a spear, the latter of
which they threw at the foe, as an effectual means of pitching into
him. A sort of reaping-hook was attached to their chariot wheels,
and was often very useful in reaping the laurels of victory.
For nearly one hundred years after Cæsar's invasion, Britain was
undisturbed by the Romans, though Caligula, that neck-or-nothing
tyrant, as his celebrated wish entitles him to be called, once or twice
had his eye upon it. The island, however, if it attracted the Imperial
eye, escaped the lash, during the period specified.
CHAPTER THE SECOND. INVASION
BY THE ROMANS UNDER CLAUDIUS
—CARACTACUS—BOADICEA—
AGRICOLA—-GALGACUS—SEVERUS
—VORTIGERN CALLS IN THE
SAXONS.

I
T was not until ninety-seven years after Cæsar had seized upon
the island that it was unceremoniously clawed by the Emperor
Claudius. Kent and Middlesex fell an easy prey to the Roman
power; nor did the brawny sons of Canterbury—since so famous
for its brawn—succeed in repelling the enemy. Aulus Plautius, the
Roman general, pursued the Britons under that illustrious character,
Caractus. He retreated towards Lambeth Marsh, and the swampy
nature of the ground gave the invaders reason to feel that it was
somewhat too

"Far into the bowels of the land

They had march'd on without impediment."

Vespasian, the second in command, made a tour in the Isle of

Wight, then called Vectis, where he boldly took the Bull by the
horns, and seized upon Cowes with considerable energy. Still, little
was done till Ostorius Scapula—whose name implies that he was a
sharp blade—put his shoulder to the wheel, and erected a line of
defences—a line in which he was so successful that it may have
been called his peculiar forte—to protect the territory that had been
acquired.
After a series of successes, Ostorius having suffocated every
breath of liberty in Suffolk, and hauled the inhabitants of Newcastle
over the coals, drove the people of Wales before him like so many
Welsh rabbits; and even the brave Caractacus was obliged to fly as
well as he could, with the remains of one of the wings of the British
army. He was taken to Rome with his wife and children, in fetters,
but his dignified conduct procured his chains to be struck off, and
from this moment we lose the chain of his history.
Ostorius, who remained in Britain, was so harassed by the natives
that he was literally worried to death; but in the reign of Nero (a.d.
59), Suetonius fell upon Mona, now the Isle of Anglesey, where the
howlings, cries, and execrations of the people were so awful, that
the name of Mona was singularly appropriate. Notwithstanding,
however, the terrific oaths of the natives, they could not succeed in
swearing away the lives of their aggressors. Suetonius, having made
them pay the penalty of so much bad language, was called up to
London, then a Roman colony; but he no sooner arrived in town,
than he was obliged to include himself among the departures, in
consequence of the fury of Boadicea, that greatest of viragoes and
first of British heroines. She reduced London to ashes, which
Suetonius did not stay to sift; but he waited the attack of Boadicea a
little way out of town, and pitched his tent within a modern omnibus
ride of the great metropolis. His fair antagonist drove after him in
her chariot, with her two daughters, the Misses Boadicea, at her
side, and addressed to her army some of those appeals on behalf of
"a British female in distress," which have since been adopted by
British dramatists. The valorous old vixen was, however, defeated;
and rather than swallow the bitter pill which would have poisoned
the remainder of her days, she took a single dose and terminated
her own existence.
Suetonius soon returned with his suite to the Continent, without
having finished the war; for it was always a characteristic of the
Britons, that they never would acknowledge they had had enough at
the hands of an enemy. Some little time afterwards, we find Cerealis
engaged in one of those attacks upon Britain which might be called
serials, from their frequent repetition; and subsequently, about the
year 75 or 78, Julius Frontinus succeeded to the business from which
so many before him had retired with very little profit.
The general, however, who cemented the power of Rome—or, to
speak figuratively, introduced the Roman cement among the Bricks
or Britons—was Julius Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus, the
historian, who has lost no opportunity of puffing most outrageously
his undoubtedly meritorious relative.

Agricola certainly did considerable havoc in Britain.

He sent the Scotch reeling oyer the Grampian Hills,
and led the Caledonians a pretty dance.
Portrait of Julius Agricola. He ran UP a kind of
rampart between the Friths of Clyde and Forth, from
which he could come forth at his leisure and complete
Original Size the conquest of Caledonia. In the sixth year of his
campaign, a.d. 83, he crossed the Frith of Forth, and
came opposite to Fife, which was played upon by the whole of his
band with considerable energy. Having wintered in Fife, upon which
he levied contributions to a pretty tune, he moved forward in the
summer of the next year, a.d. 84, from Glen Devon to the foot of the
Grampians. He here encountered Galgacus and his host, who made
a gallant resistance; but the Scottish chief was soon left to reckon
without his host, for all his followers fled like lightning, and it has
been said that their bolting came upon him like a thunderbolt.
Agricola having thoroughly beaten the Britons—on the principle,
perhaps, that there is nothing so impressible as wax—began to think
of instructing them. He had given them a few lessons in war which
they were not likely to forget, and he now thought of introducing
among their chiefs a tincture of polite letters, commencing of course
with the alphabet. The Britons finding it as easy as A, B, C, began to
cultivate the rudiments of learning, for there is a spell in letters of
which few can resist the influence. They assumed the toga, which,
on account of the comfortable warmth of the material, they very
quickly cottoned; they plunged into baths, and threw themselves
into the capacious lap of luxury.
For upwards of thirty years Britain remained tranquil, but in the
reign of Hadrian, a.d. 120, the Caledonians, whose spirit had been
"scotched, not killed," became exceedingly turbulent. Hadrian, who
felt his weakness, went to the wall of Agricola, * which was rebuilt in
order to protect the territory the Romans had acquired. Some years
afterwards the power of the empire went into a decline, which
caused a consumption at home of many of the troops that had been
previously kept for the protection of foreign possessions. Britain took
this opportunity of revolting, and in the year 207, the Emperor
Severus, though far advanced in years and a martyr to the gout,
determined to march in person against the barbarians. He had no
sooner set his foot on English ground than his gout caused him to
feel the greatest difficulties at every step, and having been no less
than four years getting to York, he knocked up there, a.d. 211, and
died in a dreadful hobble. Caracalla, son and successor to the late
Emperor Severus, executed a surrender of land to the Caledonians
for the sake of peace, and being desirous of administering to the
effects of his lamented governor in Rome, left the island for ever.

* The remains of this wall are still in existence, to

furnish food for the Archeologians who occasionally feast on
the bricks, which have become venerable with the crust of
ages. A morning roll among the mounds in the neighbourhood
where this famous wall once existed, is considered a most
delicate repast to the antiquarian.
 Original Size

The history of Britain for the next seventy years may be easily
written, for a blank page would tell all that is known respecting it. In
the partnership reign of Dioclesian and Maximian, a.d. 288, "the land
we live in" turns up again, under somewhat unfavourable
circumstances, for we find its coasts being ravaged about this time
by Scandinavian and Saxon pirates. Carausius, a sea captain, and
either a Belgian or Briton by birth, was employed against the pirates,
to whom, in the Baltic sound, he gave a sound thrashing. Instead,
however, of sending the plunder home to his employers, he pocketed
the proceeds of his own victories, and the Emperors, growing
jealous of his power, sent instructions to have him slain at the
earliest convenience. The wily sailor, however, fled to Britain, where
he planted his standard, and where the tar, claiming the natives as
his "messmates," induced them to join him in the mess he had got
into. The Roman eagles were put to flight, and both wings of the
imperial army exhibited the white feather. Peace with Carausius was
purchased by conceding to him the government of Britain and
Boulogne, with the proud title of Emperor.
 The assumption of the rank of Emperor of Boulogne seems to us
about as absurd as usurping the throne of Broadstairs, or putting on
the imperial purple at Herne Bay; but Carausius having been
originally a mere pirate, was justly proud of his new dignity. Having
swept the seas, he commenced scouring the country, and his
victories were celebrated by a day's chairing, at which he assisted as
the principal figure in a procession of unexampled pomp and
pageantry. The throne, however, is not an easy fauteuil, and
Carausius had scarcely had time to throw himself back in an attitude
of repose, when he was murdered at Eboracum (York) (a.d. 297), by
one Alectus, his confidential friend and minister. In accordance with
the custom of the period, that the murderer should succeed his
victim, Alectus ruled in Britain until he, in his turn, was slain at the
instigation of Constantius Chlorus, who became master of the island.
That individual died at York (a.d. 306), where his son Constantine,
afterwards called the Great, commenced his reign, which was a
short and not a particularly merry one, for after experiencing several
reverses in the North, he quitted the island, which, until his death in
337, once more enjoyed tranquillity.
Rome, which had so long been mighty, was like a cheese in the
same condition, rapidly going to decay, and she found it necessary
to practise what has been termed "the noble art of self-defence,"
which is admitted on all hands to be the first law of Nature. Britain
they regarded as a province, which it was not their province to look
after. It was consequently left as pickings for the Picts, * nor did it
come off scot free from the Scots, who were a tribe of Celtæ from
Ireland, and who consequently must be regarded as a mixed race of
Gallo-Hibernian Caledonians. They had, in fact, been Irishmen
before they had been Scotchmen, and Frenchmen previous to either.
Such were the translations that occurred even at that early period in
the greatest drama of all—the drama of history.

* "The Picts," says Dr. Henry, "were so called from Pictich,

a plunderer, and not from picti, painted." History, in
assigning the latter origin to their name, has failed to
exhibit them in their true colours.
 Britain continued for years suspended like a white hart—a simile
justified by its constant trepidation and alarm—with which the
Romans and others might enjoy an occasional game at bob-cherry.
Maximus (a.d. 382) made a successful bite at it, but turning aside in
search of the fruits of ambition elsewhere, the Scots and Picts again
began nibbling at the Bigaroon that had been the subject of so much
snappishness.
The Britons being shortly afterwards left once more to themselves,
elected Marcus as their sovereign (a.d. 407); but monarchs in those
days were set up like the king of skittles, only to be knocked down
again. Marcus was accordingly bowled out of existence by those who
had raised him; and one, Gratian, having succeeded to the post of
royal ninepin, was in four months as dead as the article to which we
have chosen to compare him. After a few more similar ups and
downs, the Romans, about the year 420, nearly five centuries after
Cæsar's first invasion, finally cried quits with the Britons by
abandoning the island.
In pursuing his labours over the few ensuing years, the author
would be obliged to grope in the dark; but history is not a game at
blind-man's-buff, and we will never condescend to make it so. It is
true, that with the handkerchief of obscurity bandaging our eyes, we
might turn round in a state of rigmarole, and catch what we can; but
as it would be mere guesswork by which we could describe the
object of which we should happen to lay hold, we will not attempt
the experiment.
It is unquestionable that Britain was a prey to dissensions at home
and ravages from abroad, while every kind of faction—except
satisfaction—was rife within the island.
Such was the misery of the inhabitants, that they published a
pamphlet called "The Groans of the Britons" (a.d. 441), in which
they invited Ætius, the Roman consul, to come over and turn out the
barbarians, between whom and the sea, the islanders were tossed
like a shuttlecock knocked about by a pair of battledores. Ætius, in
consequence of previous engagements with Attila and others, was
compelled to decline the invitation, and the Britons therefore had a
series of routs, which were unattended by the Roman cohorts.
The southern part of the island was now torn between a Roman
faction under Aurelius Ambrosius, and a British or "country party," at
the head of which was Vortigern. The latter is said to have called in
the Saxons; and it is certain that (a.d. 449) he hailed the two
brothers Hengist and Horsa, * who were cruising as Saxon pirates in
the British Channel. These individuals being ready for any desperate
job, accepted the invitation of Vortigern, to pass some time with him
in the Isle of Thanet. They were received as guests by the people of
Sandwich, who would as soon have thought of quarrelling with their
bread and butter as with the friends of the gallant Vortigern. From
this date commences the Saxon period of the history of Britain.

* Horen, means a horse; and the white horse, even now,

appears as the ensign of Kent, as it once did on the shield
of the Saxons. It is probable that when Horsa came to
London, he may have put up somewhere near the present site
of the White Horse Cellar. Vide "Palgrave's Rise and
Progress of the English Commonwealth."
 CHAPTER THE THIRD. THE SAXONS
—THE HEPTARCHY.

I
N obedience to custom, the etymologists have been busy with
the word Saxon, which they have derived from seax, a sword,
and we are left to draw the inference that the Saxons were very
sharp blades; a presumption that is fully sustained by their
fierce and warlike character. Their chief weapons were a battleaxe
and a hammer, in the use of which they were so adroit that they
could always hit the right nail upon the head, when occasion
required. Their shipping had been formerly exceedingly crazy, and
indeed the crews must have been crazy to have trusted themselves
in such fragile vessels. The bottoms of the boats were of very light
timber, and the sides consisted of wicker, so that the fleet must have
combined the strength of the washing-tub with the elegant lightness
of the clothes' basket. Like their neighbours the wise men of
Gotham, or Gotha, who went to sea in a bowl, the Saxons had not
scrupled to commit themselves to the mercy of the waves, in these
unsubstantial cockle-shells. The boatbuilders, however, soon took
rapid strides, and improved their craft by mechanical cunning.
Another fog now comes over the historian, but the gas of sagacity
is very useful in dispelling the clouds of obscurity. It is said that
Hengist gave an evening party to Vortigern, who fell in love with
Bowena, the daughter of his host—a sad flirt, who, throwing herself
on her knee, presented the wine-cup to the king, wishing him, in a
neat speech, all health and happiness. Vortigern's head was
completely turned by the beauty of Miss Bowena Hengist, and the
strength of the beverage she had so bewitchingly offered him.
 Original Size

A story is also told of a Saxon soirée having been given by Hengist

to the Britons, to which the host and his countrymen came, with
short swords or knives concealed in their hose, and at a given signal
drew their weapons upon their unsuspecting guests. Many historians
have doubted this dreadful tale, and it certainly is scarcely credible
that the Saxons should have been able to conceal in their stockings
the short swords or carving-knives, which must have been very
inconvenient to their calves. Stonehenge is the place at which this
cruel act of the hard-hearted and stony Hengist is reported to have
occurred; and as antiquarians are always more particular about
dates when they are most likely to be wrong, the 1st of May has
been fixed upon as the very day on which this horrible réunion was
given. It has been alleged, that Vortigern, in order to marry Bowena,
settled Kent upon Hengist; but it is much more probable that Hengist
settled himself upon Kent without the intervention of any formality.
It is certain that he became King of the County, to which he
affixed Middlesex, Essex, and a part of Surrey; so that, as sovereigns
went in those early days, he could scarcely be called a petty
potentate. The success of Hengist induced several of his
countrymen, after his death, to attempt to walk in his shoes; but it
has been well and wisely said, that in following the footsteps of a
great man an equally capacious understanding is requisite.
 The Saxons who tried this experiment were divided into Saxons
proper, Angles, and Jutes, who all passed under the common
appellation of Angles and Saxons. The word Angles was peculiarly
appropriate to a people so naturally sharp, and the whole science of
mathematics can give us no angles so acute as those who figured in
the early pages of our history.
In the year 447, Ella the Saxon landed in Sussex with his three
sons, and drove the Britons into a forest one hundred and twenty
miles long and thirty broad, according to the old writers, but in our
opinion just about as broad as it was long, for otherwise there could
have been no room for it in the place where the old writers have
planted it. Ella, however, succeeded in clutching a very respectable
slice, which was called the kingdom of South Saxony, which included
Surrey, Sussex, and the New Forest; while another invading firm,
under the title of Cerdic and Son, started a small vanquishing
business in the West, and by conquering Hampshire and the Isle of
Wight, founded the kingdom of Wessex. Cerdic was considerably
harassed by King Arthur of fabulous fame, whose valour is reported
to have been such, that he fought twelve battles with the Saxons,
and was three times married. His first and third wives were carried
away from him, but on the principle that no news is good news, the
historians tell us that as there are no records of his second consort,
his alliance with her may perhaps have been a happy one. The third
and last of his spouses ran off with his nephew Mordred, and the
enraged monarch having met his ungrateful kinsman in battle, they
engaged each other with such fury, that, like the Kilkenny cats, they
slew one another.
About the year 527, Greenwine landed on the Essex flats, which
he had no trouble in reducing, for he found them already on a very
low level. In 547, Ida, with a host of Angles, began fishing for
dominion off Flamborough head, where he effected a landing. He
however settled on a small wild space between the Tyne and the
Tees, a tiny possession, in which he was much teased by the beasts
of the forest, for the place having been abandoned, Nature had
established a Zoological Society of her own in this locality. The
kingdom thus formed was called Bernicia, and as the place was full
of wild animals, it is not improbable that the British Lion may have
originally come from the place alluded to.
Ella, another Saxon prince, defeated Lancashire and York, taking
the name of King of the Deiri, and causing the inhabitants to lick the
dust, which was the only way they could find of repaying the licking
they had received from their conqueror. Ethelred, the grandson of
Ida, having married the daughter of Ella, began to cement the union
in the old-established way, by robbing his wife's relations of all their
property. He seized on the kingdom of his brother-in-law, and added
it to his own, uniting the petty monarchies of Deiri and Bemicia into
the single sovereignty of Northumberland.

Original Size

Such were the several kingdoms which formed the Heptarchy.

Arithmeticians will probably tell us that seven into one will never go;
but into one the seven did eventually go by a process that will be
shown in the ensuing chapter.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH. THE UNION
OF THE HEPTARCHY UNDER
EGBERT.

I
F it be a sound philosophical truth, that two of a trade can never
agree, we may take it for granted that, à fortiori, seven in the
same business will be perpetually quarrelling. Such was speedily
the case with the Saxon princes; and it is not improbable that
the disturbed condition, familiarly known as a state of sixes and
sevens, may have derived its title from the turmoils of the seven
Saxon sovereigns, during the existence of the Heptarchy. Nothing
can exceed the entanglement into which the thread of history was
thrown by the battles and skirmishes of these princes. The
endeavour to lay hold of the thread would be as troublesome as the
process of looking for a needle, * not merely in a bottle of hay, but
in the very bosom of a haystack. Let us, however, apply the magnet
of industry, and test the alleged fidelity of the needle to the pole by
attempting to implant in the head of the reader a few of the points
that seem best adapted for striking him.

* "A needle in a bottle of hay," is an old English phrase,

of which we cannot trace the origin. Bottled hay must have
been sad dry stuff, but it is possible the wisdom of our
ancestors may have induced them to bottle their grass as we
in the present day bottle our gooseberries.

We will take a run through the whole country as it was then

divided, and will borrow from the storehouse of tradition the
celebrated pair of seven-leagued boots, for the purpose of a
scamper through the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy.
We will first drop in upon Kent, whose founder, Hengist, had no
worthy successor till the time of Ethelbert. This individual acted on
the principle of give and take, for he was always taking what he
could, and giving battle. He seated himself by force on the throne of
Mercia, into which he carried his arms, as if the throne of Kent had
not afforded him sufficient elbow-room. This, however, he resigned
to Webba, the rightful heir: but poor Webba (query Webber) was
kept like a fly in a spider's web, as a tributary prince to the artful
Ethelbert. This monarch's reign derived, however, its real glory from
the introduction of Christianity and the destruction of many Saxon
superstitions. He kept up a friendly correspondence with Gregory,
the punster pope, and author of the celebrated jeu de mot on the
word Angli, in the Roman market-place.*

* The pun in question is almost too venerable for

repetition, but we insert it in a note, as no History of
England seems to be complete without it. The pope, on seeing
the British children exposed for sale in the market-place at
Rome, said they would not be Angles but Angels if they had
been Christians. Non Angli sed Angeli forent si fuissent
Christiani.

Original Size
 Ethelbert died in 616, having been not only king of Kent, but
having filled the office of Bretwalda, a name given to the most
influential—or, as we should call him, the president or chairman—of
the sovereigns of the Heptarchy. His son, Eadbald, who succeeded,
failed in supporting the fame of his father. It would be useless to
pursue the catalogue of Saxons who continued mounting and
dismounting the throne of Kent—one being no sooner down than
another came on—in rapid succession. It was Egbert, king of
Wessex, who, in the year 723, had the art to seat himself on all the
seven thrones at once; an achievement which, considering the
ordinary fate of one who attempts to preserve his balance upon two
stools, has fairly earned the admiration of posterity.
Let us now take a skip into Northumberland—formed by Ethelred
in the manner we have already alluded to, out of the two kingdoms
of Deiri and Bemicia—which, though not enough for two, constituted
for one a very respectable sovereignty. The crown of
Northumberland seems to have been at the disposal of any one who
thought it worth his while to go and take it; provided he was
prepared to meet any little objections of the owner by making away
with him. In this manner, Osred received his quietus from Kenred, a
kinsman, who was killed in his turn by another of the family: and,
after a long series of assassinations, the people quietly submitted to
the yoke of Egbert.
The kingdom of East Anglia presents the same rapid panorama of
murders which settled the succession to all the Saxon thrones; and
Mercia, comprising the midland counties, furnishes all the materials
for a melodrama. Offa, one of its most celebrated kings, had a
daughter, Elfrida, to whom Ethelbert, the sovereign of the East
Angles, had made honourable proposals, and had been invited to
celebrate his nuptials at Hereford. In the midst of the festivities Offa
asked Ethelbert into a back room, in which the latter had scarcely
taken a chair when his head was unceremoniously removed from his
shoulders by the father of his intended.
Offa having extinguished the royal family of East Anglia, by
snuffing out the chief, took possession of the kingdom. In order to
expiate his crime he made friends with the pope, and exacted a
penny from every house possessed of thirty pence, or half-a-crown a
year, which he sent as a proof of penitence to the Roman pontiff.
Though at first intended by Offa as an offering, it was afterwards
claimed as a tribute, under the name of Peter's Pence, which were
exacted from the people; and the custom may perhaps have
originated the dishonourable practice of robbing Paul for the purpose
of paying Peter.
After the usual amount of slaughter, one Wiglaff mounted the
throne, which was in a fearfully rickety condition. So unstable was
this undesirable piece of Saxon upholstery that Wiglaff had no
sooner sat down upon it than it gave way with a tremendous crash,
and fell into the hands of Egbert, who was always ready to seize the
remaining stock of royalty that happened to be left to an unfortunate
sovereign on the eve of an alarming sacrifice.
The kingdom of Essex can boast of little worthy of narration, and
in looking through the Venerable Bede, we find a string of names
that are wholly devoid of interest.
The history of Sussex is still more obscure, and we hasten to
Wessex, where we find Brihtric, or Beortric, sitting in the regal
armchair that Egbert had a better right to occupy. The latter fled to
the court of Offa, king of Mercia, to whom the former sent a
message, requesting that Egbert's head might be brought back by
return, with one of Offa's daughters, whom Beortric proposed to
marry. The young lady was sent as per invoice, for she was rather a
burden on the Mercian court; but Egbert's head, being still in use,
was not duly forwarded.
Feeling that his life was a toss up, and that he might lose by
heads coming down, Egbert wisely repaired to the court of the
Emperor Charlemagne. There he acquired many accomplishments,
took lessons in fencing, and received that celebrated French polish
of which it may be fairly said in the language of criticism, that "it
ought to be found on every gentleman's table."
 Mrs. Beortric managed to poison her husband by a draft not
intended for his acceptance, and presented by mistake, which
caused a vacancy in the throne of Wessex. Egbert having embraced
the opportunity, was embraced by the people, who received him
with open arms, on his arrival from France, and hailed him as
rightful heir to the Wessexian crown, which he had never been able
to get out of his head, or on to his head, until the present favourable
juncture. In a few years he got into hostilities with the Mercians,
who being, as we are told by the chroniclers, "fat, corpulent, and
short-winded," soon got the worst of it. The lean and active droops
of Egbert prevailed over the opposing cohorts, who were at once
podgy and powerless. As they advanced to the charge, they were
met by the blows of the enemy, and as "it is an ill wind that blows
nobody good," so the very ill wind of the Mercians made good for
the soldiers of Egbert, who were completely victorious.

Original Size

Mercia was now subjugated; Kent and Essex were soon subdued;
the East Angles claimed protection; Northumberland submitted;
Sussex had for some time been swamped; and Wessex belonged to
Egbert by right of succession. Thus, about four hundred years after
the arrival of the Saxons, the Heptarchy was dissolved, in the year
827, after having been in hot water for centuries. It was only when
the spirit of Egbert was thrown in, that the hot water became a
strong and wholesome compound.
 CHAPTER THE FIFTH. THE DANES—
ALFRED.

CARCELY had unanimity begun to prevail in

England, when the country was invaded by the Danes,
whose desperate valour there was no disdaining.
Some of them, in the year 832, landed on the coast,
committed a series of ravages, and escaped to their
ships without being taken into custody. Egbert
encountered them on one occasion at Char-mouth, in
Dorsetshire, but having lost two bishops—who, by the
bye, had no business in a fight—he was glad to make
the best of his way home again.
Original Size The Danes, or Northmen, having visited Cornwall,
entered into an alliance with some of the Briks, or Britons, of the
neigh-bourhood, and marched into Devonshire; but Egbert,
collecting the cream of the Devonshire youth, poured it down upon
the heads of his enemies. According to some historians, Egbert met
with considerable resistance, and it has even been said that the
Devonshire cream experienced a severe clouting. It is certainly
sufficient to make the milk of human kindness curdle in the veins
when we read the various recitals of Danish ferocity. Egbert,
however, was successful at the battle of Hengsdown Hill, where
many were put to the sword, by the sword being put to them, in the
most unscrupulous manner. This was the last grand military drama in
which Egbert represented the hero. He died in 836, after a long
reign, which had been one continued shower of prosperity.
 Ethelwolf, the eldest son of Egbert, now came to the throne, but
misunderstanding the maxim, Divide et impera, he began to divide
his kingdom, as the best means of ruling it, and gave a slice
consisting of Kent and its dependencies to his son Athelstane.
The Scandinavian pirates having no longer an opponent like
Egbert, ravaged Wessex; sailed up the Thames, which, if they could,
they would have set on fire; gave Canterbury, Rochester, and
London a severe dose, in the shape of pillage; and got into the heart
of Surrey, which lost all heart on the approach of the enemy.
Ethelwolf, however, taking with him his second son Ethelbald, met
them at Okely—probably in the neighbourhood of Oakley Street—
and at a place still retaining the name of the New Cut, made a
fearful incision into the ranks of the enemy. The Danes retired to
settle in the isle of Thanet, to repose after the settling they had
received in Surrey, at the hands of the Saxons. Notwithstanding the
state of his kingdom, Ethelwolf found time for an Italian tour, and
taking with him his fourth son, Alfred the Great—then Alfred the
Little, for he was a child of six—started to Rome, on that very vague
pretext, a pilgrimage. He spent a large sum of money abroad, gave
the Pope an annuity for himself, and another to trim the lamps of St.
Peter and St. Paul, which has given rise to the celebrated jeu de mot
that, "instead of roaming about and getting rid of his cash in
trimming foreign lamps, he ought to have remained at home for the
purpose of trimming his enemies."
On his return through France, he fell in love with Judith, the
daughter of Charles the Bald, the king of the Franks, who probably
gave a good fortune to the bride, for Charles being known as the
bald, must of course have been without any heir apparent. When
Ethelwolf arrived at home with his new wife, he found his three
sons, or as he had been in the habit of calling them, "the boys,"—
indignant at the marriage of their governor. According to some
historians and chroniclers, Osburgha, his first wife, was not dead,
but had been simply "put away" to make room for Judith. It certainly
was a practice of the kings in the middle age, and particularly if they
happened to be middle-aged kings, to "put away" an old wife; but
the real difficulty must have been where on earth to put her. If
Osburgha consented quietly to be laid upon the shelf, she must have
differed from her sex in general.
Athelstane being dead, Ethelbald was now the king's eldest son,
and had made every arrangement for a fight with his own father for
the throne, when the old gentleman thought it better to divide his
crown than run the risk of getting it cracked in battle. "Let us not
split each other's heads, my son," he affectingly exclaimed, "but
rather let us split the difference." Ethelbald immediately cried halves
when he found his father disposed to cry quarter, and after a short
debate they came to a division. The undutiful son got for himself the
richest portion of the kingdom of Wessex, leaving his unfortunate
sire to sigh over the eastern part, which was the poorest moiety of
the royal property. The ousted Ethelwolf did not survive more than
two years the change which had made him little better than half-a-
sove-reign, for he died in 867, and was succeeded by his son
Ethelbald. This person was, to use an old simile, as full of mischief
"as an egg is full of meat," and indeed somewhat fuller, for we never
yet found a piece of beef, mutton, or veal, in the whole course of
our oval experience. Ethelbald, however, reigned only two years,
having first married and subsequently divorced his father's widow
Judith, whose venerable parent Charles the Bald, was happily
indebted to his baldness for being spared the misery of having his
grey hairs brought down in sorrow to the grave by the misfortunes
of his daughter. This young lady, for she was still young in spite of
her two marriages, her widowhood, and divorce, had retired to a
convent near Paris, when a gentleman of the name of Baldwin,
belonging to an old standard family, ran away with her. He was
threatened with excommunication by the young lady's father, but
treating the menaces of Charles the Bald as so much balderdash, Mr.
Baldwin sent a herald to the Pope, who allowed the marriage to be
legally solemnised.
We have given a few lines to Judith because, by her last marriage,
she gave a most illustrious line to us; for her son having married the
youngest daughter of Alfred the Great, was the ancestor of Maud,
the wife of William the Conqueror.
Ethelbald was succeeded by Ethelbert, whose reign, though it
lasted only five years, may be compared to a rain of cats and dogs,
for he was constantly engaged in quarrelling. The Danes completely
sacked and ransacked Winchester, causing Ethelbert to exclaim, with
a melancholy smile, to one of his courtiers, "This is indeed the
bitterest cup of sack I ever tasted." He died in 866 or 867, and was
succeeded by his brother Ethelred, who found matters arrived at
such a pitch, that he fought nine pitched battles with the Danes in
less than a twelvemonth. He died in the year 871, of severe wounds,
and the crown fell from his head on to that of his younger brother
Alfred. The regal diadem was sadly tarnished when it came to the
young king, who resolved that it should not long continue to lack
lacker; and by his glorious deeds he soon restored the polish that
had been rubbed off by repeated leathering. He had scarcely time to
sit down upon the throne when he was called into the field to fulfil a
very particular engagement with the Danes at Wilton. They were
compelled to stipulate for a safe retreat, and went up to London for
the winter, where they so harassed Burrhed the king of Mercia, in
whose dominions London was situated, that the poor fellow ran
down the steps of his throne, left his sceptre in the regal hall, and,
repairing to Rome, finished his days in a cloister.
The Danes still continued the awful business of dyeing and
scouring, for they scoured the country round, and dyed it with the
blood of the inhabitants. Alfred, finding himself in the most terrible
straits, conceived the idea of getting out of the straits by means of
ships, of which he collected a few, and for a time he went on
swimmingly.
He taught Britannia her first lesson in ruling the waves, by
destroying the fleet of Guthrum the Dane, who had promised to
make his exit from the kingdom on a previous defeat, but by a
disgraceful quibble he had, instead of making his exit, retired to
Exeter. From this place he now retreated, and took up his quarters at
Gloucester, while Alfred, it being now about Christmas time, had
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