Dinosaurs, with Special Reference to the American Museum CollectionsMatthew, William Diller
Science
Dinosaurs, with Special Reference to the American Museum Collections
Matthew, William Diller
Dinosaurs
The hind leg, pelvis and much of the tail of this specimen lay in very
orderly arrangement in the sandstone near the edge of the quarry, but
the bones were broken into innumerable pieces. After consultation we
decided that they were too much broken to be worth saving--and so most
of them went over into the dump. Sacrilege, doubtless, the modern
collector will say, but we did not know much about the modern methods
of collecting in those days, and moreover we were in too much of a
hurry to get the new discoveries to Yale College to take much pains
with them. I did observe that the caudal vertebrae had very peculiar
chevrons, unlike others that I had seen, and so I attempted to save
some samples of them by pasting them up with thick layers of paper.
Had we only known of plaster-of-paris and burlap the whole specimen
might easily have been saved. Later, when I reached New Haven, I took
off the paper and called Professor Marsh's attention to the strange
chevrons. And _Diplodocus_ was the result.
[Illustration: Fig. 44.--The first dinosaur specimen found at
Bone-Cabin Quarry. Hind limb of _Diplodocus_.]
My own connection with the discoveries of these old dinosaurs
continued only through the following summer, in Wyoming, when we added
the first mammals from the hills immediately back of the station, and
the types of some of the smaller dinosaurs, and when we explored the
vicinity for other deposits, on Rock Creek and in the Freeze Out
Mountains.
How many tons of these fossils have since been dug up from these
deposits in the Rocky Mountains is beyond computation. My prophecy of
hundreds of tons has been fulfilled; and they are preserved in many
museums of the world.
S.W. WILLISTON.
THE DINOSAURS OF THE BONE-CABIN QUARRY.[20]
_By Henry Fairfield Osborn._
One is often asked the questions: "How do you find fossils?" "How do
you know where to look for them?" One of the charms of the
fossil-hunter's life is the variety, the element of certainty combined
with the gambling element of chance. Like the prospector for gold, the
fossil-hunter may pass suddenly from the extreme of dejection to the
extreme of elation. Luck comes in a great variety of ways: sometimes
as the result of prolonged and deliberate scientific search in a
region which is known to be fossiliferous; sometimes in such a prosaic
manner as the digging of a well. Among discoveries of a highly
suggestive, almost romantic kind, perhaps none is more remarkable than
the one I shall now describe.
_Discovery of the Great Dinosaur Quarry._ In central Wyoming, at the
head of a "draw," or small valley, not far from the Medicine Bow
River, lies the ruin of a small and unique building, which marks the
site of the greatest "find" of extinct animals made in a single
locality in any part of the world. The fortunate fossil-hunter who
stumbled on this site was Mr. Walter Granger of the American Museum
expedition of 1897.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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