Morrison Natural History Museum's blog "Jurassic Journal" chronicles the fossil discoveries, historic and modern, around Morrison, Colorado. And what a history it is.
Thanks to mountain-building, strata spanning from the end of the Pennsylvanian through the dawn of the Paleogene can be examined at the surface in the foothills belt west of Denver. This is the setting for significant fossil discoveries in the late 1870s.
The tiny foothills town of Morrison, Colorado holds a special place in the history of North American paleontology. An early battlefield in the famed Marsh-Cope “Bone Wars,” Morrison produced the earliest large sample of famous Late Jurassic dinosaurs, (Ostrom and McIntosh, 1966).
The dinosaur beds of the Morrison Formation were co-discovered and excavated by geologist and naturalist Arthur Lakes and his crew between 1877 and 1879, (Kohl and McIntosh, 1997). The formation acquired its initial name - the “Atlantosaurus Beds”- in honor of the first name applied to a gigantic sauropod dinosaur dug by Lakes at his Quarry 1, (Kohl and McInstosh, 1997). At least 13 sites were worked by Lakes; four sites yielded specimens of particular paleontological value due to the diagnostic nature of the fossils yielded.
Future blog posts will discuss each major Morrison fossil site, along with new information on historic specimens, and new finds.
Thanks to mountain-building, strata spanning from the end of the Pennsylvanian through the dawn of the Paleogene can be examined at the surface in the foothills belt west of Denver. This is the setting for significant fossil discoveries in the late 1870s.
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View from Quarry 10, the "tomb" of the first Apatosaurus. Mount Morrison is the highest point in the photo, below that point is world famous Red Rocks Park. The "red" rocks themselves are 300 million year old alluvial fans that were deposited at the base of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. By the end of the Jurassic, Apatosaurus would have known no mountains at all. Photo copyright MNHM. |
The tiny foothills town of Morrison, Colorado holds a special place in the history of North American paleontology. An early battlefield in the famed Marsh-Cope “Bone Wars,” Morrison produced the earliest large sample of famous Late Jurassic dinosaurs, (Ostrom and McIntosh, 1966).
The dinosaur beds of the Morrison Formation were co-discovered and excavated by geologist and naturalist Arthur Lakes and his crew between 1877 and 1879, (Kohl and McIntosh, 1997). The formation acquired its initial name - the “Atlantosaurus Beds”- in honor of the first name applied to a gigantic sauropod dinosaur dug by Lakes at his Quarry 1, (Kohl and McInstosh, 1997). At least 13 sites were worked by Lakes; four sites yielded specimens of particular paleontological value due to the diagnostic nature of the fossils yielded.
Future blog posts will discuss each major Morrison fossil site, along with new information on historic specimens, and new finds.
Nota Bene:
This is a modified excerpt from M.T. Mossbrucker and R.T. Bakker "A Guide to the Paleontology of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Morrison, Colorado: New Interpretations and Discoveries." Bulletin of the Morrison Natural History Museum, Volume 1, page 1.
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Bryan Turner for his editorial skill.
References:
Kohl, M. and McIntosh J. S. (Eds.), 1997, "Discovering Dinosaurs in the Old West: The Field Journals of Arthur Lakes." Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press.
Ostrom, J.H. and McIntosh, J.S., 1966. Marsh’s Dinosaurs: The Collections from Como Bluff, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.