What was the first mounted dinosaur cast reflecting a bipedal stance in the United States?
In the 1860s, at the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, a mounted cast skeleton of a Hadrosaurus was the first to reflect a bipedal stance. Named and described by Joseph Leidy (1823-1891) in 1858, this Hadrosaurus was the first cast skeleton in North America to be free-mounted. Working with Leidy on this project were paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897) and Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807-1889), who was the sculptor of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs in England.
What was the first mounted dinosaur skeleton in the Western Hemisphere?
In the Western Hemisphere, the first skeleton composed of real dinosaur bone fossils was mounted in 1901 at Yales Peabody Museum of Natural History. A skeleton of an Edmontosaurus was mounted in an erect, bipedal, running stance.
What were the great North American Bone Wars of the late 1800s?
The Bone Wars was the name given to the great rush to find, collect, name, and describe dinosaur fossils discovered from areas in the western United States. The impetus to this fervor was the intense, bitter, personal rivalry between two American paleontologists: Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899) and Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897).
Starting in the 1870s, both men once friends funded and led competing expeditions to sites in the western United States. Each was trying to discover and name more dinosaurs than the other. Their objectives were the remains of Late Jurassic dinosaurs in the Morrison formation located in numerous sites in Colorado and Como Bluff, Wyoming. Among the new dinosaurs they discovered were several well-known ones, such as Allosaurus, Apatosaurus (formerly known as Brontosaurus), Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, Triceratops, Camptosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Stegosaurus. By the 1890s, the two men uncovered and described a total of some 136 species of dinosaurs between them, although later analysis of the fossils reduced this number somewhat.
Who was Othniel Charles Marsh?
Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899) was an American paleontologist who made numerous contributions to the field of paleontology. In addition to his contributions to the evolutionary history of the horse, he discovered and named numerous dinosaurs during the Bone Wars of the late 1800s. In 1866, he helped establish, with the financial backing of his uncle George Peabody, the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University; he was also a professor at Yale.
In 1882, Marsh published the first dinosaur classification, which formed the foundation for the modern dinosaur classification. In the same year, Marsh was appointed as an official vertebrate paleontologist of the United States Geological Survey.
Who was Edward Drinker Cope?
Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897) was an American paleontologist who was the most prolific namer of reptiles, both extinct and living. He named over 1,000 new species, including many fish and mammal species; and he was considered one of the top experts in amphibians of his time. Cope was the son of a wealthy shipping magnate in Philadelphia, which allowed him to live as a freelance scholar associated with the Philadelphia Academy of Science.
Who was Charles H. Sternberg?
Charles H. Sternberg (1850-1943) began as a collector of dinosaurs for Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897). Later he became known as a professional fossil collector in his own right, and he worked for a number of institutions from 1876 to the early 1900s. His collecting took him through the dinosaur beds across the border from Montana and the Dakotas, and on into Canada. He and his sons made important discoveries in the Badlands of Alberta, forming the core of many dinosaur collections in Toronto, Ottawa, New York, and other worldwide dinosaur institutions.
