In this quarry, the dinosaurs are being found in something called mudstone, silt stone or a shale and these rocks are very fine grained and they represent quiet water environments.
They were not as fine grained as they now have become, but in which he might have a strong intuition about what the right answer was, but reasonable people could differ.
The room was like a cabin and not like a cabin. Two brass lamps swung in gimbels hung above a dark desk that was not wood, possibly plastic. At the end were two bunks in grained wood.