Dinosaurs | Page 8

Centennial Exposition (1876) it had been planned that
Professor Cope's collection of fossils should form part of a great public
museum in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, the city undertaking the cost
of preparing and exhibiting the specimens, an arrangement similar to
that existing between the American Museum and the City of New
York.[8]
"The plan, however, fell through, and the greater part of this
magnificent collection remained in storage in the basement of
Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, for the next twenty years. From time
to time Professor Cope removed parts of the collection to his private
museum in Pine Street, for purposes of study and scientific description.
He seems, however, to have had no idea of the perfection and value of
this specimen. In 1899 when the collection was purchased from his
executors by Mr. Jesup, the writer went to Philadelphia under the
instructions of Professor Osborn, Curator of Fossil Vertebrates, to
superintend the packing and removal to the American Museum. At that
time the collection made by Hubbell was still in Memorial Hall, and the
boxes were piled up just as they came in from the West, never having
been unpacked. Professor Cope's assistant, Mr. Geismar, informed the
writer that Hubbell's collection was mostly fragmentary and not of any
great value. Mr. Hubbell's letters from the field unfortunately were not
preserved, but it is likely that they did not make clear what a splendid
find he had made, and as some of his earlier collections had been
fragmentary and of no great interest, the rest were supposed to be of the
same kind.
"When the Cope Collection was unpacked at the American Museum,
this lot of boxes, not thought likely to be of much interest, was left until

the last, and not taken in hand until 1902 or 1903. But when this
specimen was laid out, it appeared that a treasure had come to light.
Although collected by the crude methods of early days, it consisted of
the greater part of the skeleton of a single individual, with the bones in
wonderfully fine preservation, considering that they had been buried
for say eight million years. They were dense black, hard and uncrushed,
even better preserved and somewhat more complete than the two fine
skeletons of Allosaurus from Bone-Cabin Quarry, the greatest treasures
that this famous quarry had supplied. The great carnivorous dinosaurs
are much rarer than the herbivorous kinds, and these three skeletons are
the most complete that have ever been found. In all the years of
energetic exploration that the late Professor Marsh devoted to searching
for dinosaurs in the Jurassic and Cretaceous formations of the West, he
did not obtain any skeletons of carnivorous kinds anywhere near as
complete as these, and their anatomy was in many respects unknown or
conjectural. By comparison of the three Allosaurus skeletons with one
another and with other specimens of carnivorous dinosaurs of smaller
size in this and other museums, particularly in the National Museum
and the Kansas University Museum, we have been able to reconstruct
the missing parts of the Cope specimen with very little possibility of
serious error."
Evidence for Combining and Posing this Mount. "An incomplete
specimen of Brontosaurus, found by Doctor Wortman and Professor
W.C. Knight of the American Museum Expedition of 1897, had
furnished interesting data as to the food and habits of Allosaurus, which
were confirmed by several other fragmentary specimens obtained later
in the Bone-Cabin Quarry. In this Brontosaurus skeleton several of the
bones, especially the spines of the tail vertebrae, when found in the
rock, looked as if they had been scored and bitten off, as though by
some carnivorous animal which had either attacked the Brontosaurus
when alive, or had feasted upon the carcass. When the Allosaurus jaw
was compared with these score marks, it was found to fit them exactly,
the spacing of the scratches being the same as the spacing of the teeth.
Moreover, on taking out the Brontosaurus vertebrae from the quarry, a
number of broken off teeth of Allosaurus were found lying beside them.
As no other remains of Allosaurus or any other animal were

intermingled with the Brontosaurus skeleton, the most obvious
explanation was that these teeth were broken off by an Allosaurus
while devouring the Brontosaurus carcass. Many of the bones of other
herbivorous dinosaurs found in the Bone-Cabin Quarry were similarly
scored and bitten off, and the teeth of Allosaurus were also found close
to them.
"With these data at hand the original idea was conceived of combining
these two skeletons, both from the same formation and found within a
few miles of each other, to represent what must actually have happened
to them in the remote Jurassic period, and mount the Allosaurus
skeleton standing over the remains of a Brontosaurus in the attitude of
feeding upon