The Monument Rocks

The Monument Rocks. One of the Eight Wonders of Kansas. , Over 100 million years ago, during the cretaceous era, Kansas was covered by a vast ocean. Dramatic natural features, such as the Monument Rocks, are remains of that ancient seabed., Since the 1870s, fossil hunters have searched the chalk beds and limestone hillsides of the Smoky Hill River region for the remains of ancient creatures. They have made some of the most significant discoveries in North American paleontology. Among the most astonishing finds were flying reptiles with a 30-foot wingspan known as pteranodons. They surprised scientists because, unlike other flying reptiles, their beaks and hollow bones seemed to make them the ancestors of birds., A Real Life Jurasic [sic] Park , The first scientific explorers in Kansas were looking for dinosaurs! Paleontologists and bone hunters competed with each other to discover new types of fossils. The competition between two of them -- Professor Edwin D. Cope (1840-1897) of Harvard, and Professor Othniel C. Marsh (1831-1899) of Yale -- was so fierce that their rivalry in the 1870s and 1880s was called "the Bone Wars.", The army often provided escorts for the scientists. Buffalo Bill once guided Othniel Marsh on an expedition through western Nebraska. Like other frontiersmen, Cody even made extra money by finding fossils and shipping them to museums back east!, Many of the greatest discoveries were made in western Kansas by Charles H. Sternberg (1850-1943). He and his sons George (1883-1969), Charles M. (1885-1981), and Levi (1894-1976) were the first to find and identify several species of cretaceous life. Fossils excavated by the Sternbergs are part of major museum collections throughout the United States and Europe, including the Fick Fossil and History Museum in Oakley and the Sternberg Museum at Hays. Approximately 20 miles south of Oakley, near the Smoky Hill River, please visit the Monument Rocks and see local fossil remains at the Keystone Gallery.