Notes on the Lance Formation of Southern Saskatchewan
Notes on the Lance Formation of Southern Saskatchewan is a scholarly work, published in 1924 in ''Canadian Field-Naturalist''. The main subjects of the publication include geography, geology, and paleoclimatology. A part of the field season of 1921 the writer was sent by the Director of the Geological Survey of Canada to Rocky Creek, Saskatchewan, for the purpose of making a systematic collection of vertebrate fossils and collecting specimens for museum purposes.Rocky Creek is a small stream which Heads on the southern face of Wood Mountain plateau and runs south, emptying into Milk River in Montana.Near the head of this creek in township 1, ranges 4 and 5, west of the third meridian, the country is broken into rugged "badlands".The beds are composed largely of clays, sandy clays, and sands and bear a close resemblance to the upper part of the Belly River series as exposed farther west in Alberta.They are sombre in colour, but individual beds seldom continue for any great distance without change.The beds are soft and absorb great quantities of water during the season of spring rains, thus aiding in the rapid denudation.There are very few areas of hard sandstone, but in some places the clay has been indurated by the combustion of lignite beds, which are to be found in the upper portion, and forms a resistant layer which serves as a protecting cap for isolated buttes.This combustion evidently took place long ago, as widely separated red topped buttes are all that is left to mark what was once the level of the plain.This red brick layer is on the same plane as the existing lignite beds.Fossil vertebrates were first reported from these badlands in 1875 by Dr.