paleonet "New" old articles by C. H. Sternberg

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All,

I have recently received copies of some very obscure papers by Charles H. 
Sternberg (1898, 1900, 1900)... They were published in a small (long 
extinct) journal, in his informal style, but they give a very good sense of 
collecting in western Kansas in the late 1800s.  I have the ePapers versions 
up on Oceans of Kansas  at:

Sternberg, Charles H. 1898. Ancient monsters of Kansas. Popular Science News 
32:268.
http://www.oceansofkansas.com/Strnbrg98.html
(Interesting discussion of the stratigraphy of the Late Cretaceous in 
Kansas, pteranodons and a dramatic Tylosaurus encounter)

Sternberg, Charles H. 1900. Fossil-collector's experiences. Popular Science 
News 34:34.
http://www.oceansofkansas.com/Strnbrg00a.html
(The discovery and collection of the very nice Protostega gigas specimen 
that was later sold to the Carnegie Museum (CMNH 1421). I was interested to 
note Sternberg's comment that it was found in Gove County... (NOT).. Wieland 
(1906, p. 282) wrote that CMNH 1421 was collected from along Hackberry Creek 
in southern Gove County, Kansas and that the two specimens were found fairly 
close together. If this locality had been correct, these specimens would be 
the earliest known examples of the species. However, Sternberg (1909, p. 
116) noted in his book, Life of a Fossil Hunter, that he "should like to 
correct this mistake. It was found about three miles northwest of Monument 
Rocks, in a ravine that opens into the Smoky [Hill River], east of where 
Elkader once stood.")

Sternberg, Charles H. 1900. The sharks of Kansas. Popular Science News 
34:38.
http://www.oceansofkansas.com/Strnbrg00b.html
(Mostly this article is about the very large specimen of Cretoxyrhina that 
was sold to the natural history museum in Munich, described by Eastman 
(1895) and was destroyed in WWII. However, it was interesting to me for the 
large Squalicorax specimen that he described in detail.  This specimen is 
mentioned in other notes by Sternberg but not in this level of detail.. 
unfortunately, it is also probably 'missing'.)

Best regards,

Mike Everhart
Adjunct Curator of Paleontology
Sternberg Museum of Natural History
http://www.oceansofkansas.com/ePapers.html