'PURPLE BONES'

University palaeontologists dug for "purple bones" in an Argentine valley last summer.

A five-ton shipment of fossils encased in stone arrived this week at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, co-sponsor of the expedition with the National Museum of Buenos Aires.

The bones are of reptiles which lived during the Middle Triassic Period, 170 million years ago. It will take the museum several years to prepare for display.

Exposed in the valley, the bones had been covered with a purple matrix containing an iron compound.

Directing the expedition were Alfred S. Romer, director of the museum, and Bryan Patterson, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology.