There is no country on earth better known to the student of ancient life than that extending from western Trego county, Kansas, to the Colorado line, including the brooks and ravines of the Smoky Hill river and its forks, for here are the burial grounds of a race of reptiles, fishes, birds and winged lizards, that lived long ago.
     Long before the Rocky mountains were uplifted, a vast sea—the Cretaceous—covered the region west of the limestone rocks of eastern Kansas. These rocks the upper Carboniferous — were the eastern shore line of this great ocean, which at first was covered with islands on which grew luxurious forests of fig, magnolia, sassafras, redwood, birch, etc. of which over 400 species then flourished. The sediment laid down by the rivers that flowed into it and covered the ocean floor, was composed of sand and clay, and the exposures in Ellsworth and other counties of central Kansas, are differently colored sandstones and clays. This group of the Cretaceous was named the Dakota, or Cretaceous No. 1 by the United States geologist Dr. F. V. Hayden, who named the succeeding ones.
     Later the sea deepened and beds of compact limestone, composed of the ground-up fragments of clam-like shells and black shale beds were laid down. The stone posts of Kansas come from this formation, which is known as the Ft. Benton group or the Cretaceous No. 2. It was first studied by Hayden at Ft. Benton, Montana.
     On top of this lie the blue shale, yellow and reddish chalks of the Niobrara, while on the heads of the north and south forks of the Smoky are the black shales of the Ft. Pierre group or Cretaceous No. 4. All these groups contain fossil remains, but the Niobrara is by far the richest. My brother, Dr. Geo. M. Sternberg, U. S A., made one of the first collections in this region, while surgeon of a scouting party who went from Ft. Harker in Ellsworth County to Ft. Wallace, following the old Butterfield stage route up the Smoky river.
     In 1872 the late Prof. Cope, of Philadelphia, conducted an expedition here, and both he and Prof. Marsh, of Yale College, kept parties in this field every year until about 1878. There has hardly been a year since that collectors have not been at work searching for monsters that prove that “truth is stranger than fiction.” The large universities of the world have specimens from these famous beds.
     How shall I give even a slight idea of these wonderful birds, reptiles, pterodactyls, fishes and shells? Shall we in imagination walk along the shores of that grand ocean, explore its bays and estuaries, and replace the flesh on the bony skeletons, that only remain to teach us of their power when full of life and motion?

     We climb a ridge, and a shout of surprise involuntary arises from our lips as we find the waters replete with strange animals, and the sun above us darkened by the wings of great flying dragons, who flap their leathery pinions over the bay, or with broad expanded wings, 20 feet from tip to tip, rest motionless upon the air. Their heads 4 ft. in length, terminate in long bony toothless beaks; their large powerful eyes are watching the depth below; a luckless fish attracts the monster’s attention and with fearful speed he dashes into the blue water and reappears with the poor fish which rapidly disappears down his cavernous throat; then he resumes his majestic circles and watches for another victim.