Hunting for Grandpa BumpsAuthor(s): Alfred Sherwood RomerSource: The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jul., 1943), pp. 94-96Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/18222 .

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94 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the air required for complete combustion, aucd virtually perfect combustion can be obtaiuled. Although at first thought it might appear that the pulverized coal woould have a higsher comLbustion rate, the rate is similar, per cubic foot of furuace voluLme, to that obtainec with solid coal in stoker firilug.

Furlaces are often lred directly from ilndivid-ual pulverizer mills with suecess equal to that attained by direct-fired steam boiler furnaces. However, it is often desirable to pulverize at a central plant anld distribute the coal to incdi- viclual furnaces. There are various ways of achieviug this distributiou. Pulver- ized coal wheui mixed with air can be made to flow through standard pipe over distances up to 5,000 feet, andl the most common types of distribution utilize this property.

Wider Utilization Foreseen Power directly from coal has long been

the dream of engineers, ancd teebnolo- gists at Battelle Memorial Institute, un- der the sponsorship of BituLminous Coal Research, are investigating this possi- bility along with other app]ications of pulverized coal.

As a further application, one writer has suggested that Germuany muay at- tempt to devise ways to ultilize pulver- ized coal as an aircraft engine fuel because of her difficulty in retaining adequate supplies of petroleumi. This recalls the interesting fact that when I)iesel, about 1890, was planning the type of engine which now bears his nalee, his primary idea had been to emuploy coal dust as fuel. After several years of ex- perimental work, the engine which he conistructed proved to be adapted to oil fuel but not at all to coal or even gas, and so for this, as well as econolmie rea- sons, its ultimate developn-ient was di- rected toward the utilization of oil.

Although unsuccessful as a locolmotive fuel twenty years ago, advances sinee that tinm e indicate that pulverized coal will be an inliportant locomotive fuel of the future. Anticipating further ad- vances in coal science and technology, one may expect still wider utilization of this fuel of our ancestors by our progeny, and its advantages of eomplete eombus- tion, perfect control and flexibility will contribute mnuch to its expancded use.

R. 0. STITH

HUNTING FOR GRANDPA BUMPS THE Redbeds of Northwestern Texas,

contaiiiing the remains of many ancient lanid vertebrates, lhave been worked for seventy years past. But ulntil the dis- eovery of Grancdpa Bumps only one large ancient arnphibiall had been found in these deposits. This was Eryops, a rather advaleed type, familiar to mru- seuim visitors ancd to readers of elemen- tary texts. I was consequently m-uch surprised when, a dozen years or so ago, I ran upon fragmelits representing a large new labyrinthodoont. The material was very scrappy-bits of backbone, and limbs ancd, most common, chunks of bone about the size of one's fist. These bore, ,on one surface, the pitted sculpture

commion on the skull bones of early amphibians alid on the other, the brokeni- off bases of very large teeth.

Obviously the animal was a new one, alid since the remains were from a hori- zon lower than those normally worked in Texas, the chanees were very good that it might be a more primitive form than those conmmon in the Texas beds. The characteristic " nuggets " were surely represelntative of thickened swell- ings on the aniuial's muzzle which, be- eause of their stout build, survived the vicissitudes which had destroyed the rest of the skull. It was therefore reason- ably given the scienitific nanme of Edops -"swollen face." To those of us who

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

searched for his remains, however, the creature has been known by the more homely name of " Gran(dpa Bumps. "

The first scraps fo-und of Granidpa Bumups oniy whetted our appetites for more. We desired a skeleton, if pos- sible, or at least a skull--for many of the most important features of amphib- ian evolution are revealed in cranial morphology. For some years he eluded us. More and mnore scraps were found, but never a skull or skeleton, or even any two pieces that wouldl fit together.

Finally, one spring a few years back, when I founld it possib:le to get to Texas for a mfonth, ( id to take with me assis- tant preparator R. V. Witter, from the Harvard M-Luseum, it was decided that our main purpose would be to trace G-ralldpa Bumps to his lair, and devote our eliergies to exploring the formation in which alone his remains were to be

expected. We did so; but it was a dreary business. The sedimeni-ts of this horizon-are unusually barren and many a day we would return to eamp wvithout a bone of any sort worth saving-and with no trace at all of our venerable amphibian friend.

Came the last day before I mu-st take the traini back to Cambridge. We had resignied ourselves to failure as regards Edops, and comforted ourselves in the thought that we had at least founLd a few other interesting specimens. That morn- ing, as a last try,, we stopped our car at Terrapin School. Behind the white schoolhouse the bank dropped sharply into a natural amphitheatre, perhaps a inile across. Its center was a flat mes- quite-covered plain. But its nmarginis, fifty feet or more high, showed plenty of rock surfaces in which fossils might be founld. So at the bottom of the slope

R:ECONSTRUCTED SKULL OF EDOPS " GRANDPA BUMPS"

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96 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

we parted, Witter to work rounld the left side, I to the right, with the unnderstand- ing that if all wenit as usual we would meet on the opposite side at lunch time.

On my side of the hollow I founld plenity of clays ancd shales ancd gravels to be looked over, many a bank to climb an-id gullies to explore. But no traee of -boie of any sort. It was! a hot Juine dav, with a temperature that was prob- ably about 100 in the shade, and coii- siderably over that in the white glare from bare rocks in the still air of this depression. By noon I had reached the far side of the hollow, weary, dis- couraged anid thirsty, longing for a re- turn to the shade of the car and a deep draught of cann-ied tomato (eivilizationi's greatest gift to the Southwest).

But Witter hadn't arrived. The task was niot completed. So I kept) on along the wall of the amphitheatre, lookingo (but Hot too hopefully) for bone and (hopefully) for Witter around each corner.

Two o'clock. Still no Witter. This was really too mnmch. I abandoned the search and struck back across the flat and through the mesquite for the car.

There, not more than a hundred yards from our starting point, the missing Witter sat, cool and happy, fitting to- gether pieces of bone. Within a few minutes of the time we parted he had come upon the place where the skull of a great amphibian, now broken into fragments, had lain. And he had spent the rest of the morning right there, searching for the pieces, large and small, which had washed away from the spot and been buried in the gravels and clays nearby. When such pieces as couldl be

readily fitted in the field were put to- gether, we saw that we had a new type of amphibiani skull-anid that this n-iew type was the long-sought-for Granldpa Bumps.

Granidpa returnied with us to the lab- oratory. A few pieces of his skull (in- dicated by hatched areas oni the accom- paniyinig photograph) had apparently washed too far down the gullies for us to find, but most of it was presenit, anid except for the tip of his snout we were finally abl.e to make out almost every feature of his cranial anatomy; the de- tails are give\n in a paper by Witter anid the writer in a recent number of the Joarnal of Geology. The skull is nearly a yard in lenigth aild is, as far as I am aware, the largest known amoong Paleo- zoic amphibians. More important is the fact that it proved, as we had hoped would be true, to be more primitive than that of the typical Redbeds labryrini- thodconts. Because of excellent preser- vation (as contrasted with the imperfee- tions of Carboniferous material), Edops can thus boast of having the most primi- tive of adeq-uately known amphibian skulls. From the well-preserved brain- case it proved possible to obtain an ex- cellent cast of the brain cavity. This has been described in the Jotrnal of Comparatitve Neurology by Dr. Tilly Edinger anid the writer. It appears to have enclosed a type of brain more primitive than that of any living tetra- pod and offers valuable elues as to the course of brain evolution in land verte- brates. Grandpa Buimps was a modest and retiring animal; but at long last he did his bit toward the advancement of science.

ALFRED S HERWOOD ROMER

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