NOW THIS IS A STORY ALL ABOUT HOW THE FIELD OF MODERN DINOSAUR PALEONTOLOGY EXISTS AS YOU KNOW IT THANKS AND ONLY THANKS TO HADROSAURUS
Take a brief moment and think about how much we knew about dinosaurs during the 1850s. Didn’t take long, right? EXACTLY BECAUSE WE BARELY KNEW ANYTHING AT ALL
And at first America was of little help to resolve this. We had some teeth from the badlands out west and some footprints in Connecticut that weren’t even recognized as dinosaurs then. That was it.
At least until 1858, when Joseph Leidy, esteemed paleontologist, eminent naturalist, exceptional parasitologist, microscope fanatic, and the “Last Man Who Knew Everything”, got wind of some giant bones coming out of a marl pit in New Jersey. Yeah it wasn’t much, but at the time it was the most complete skeleton of a dinosaur known anywhere ever.
And it was more than enough to completely change our view of what dinosaurs looked like. This was no lumbering, quadrupedal beast halfway between a crocodile and a rhinoceros. This was a creature that stood upright, on two legs, stretching towards the sky.
And it was more than enough for Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, an inaugural paleoartist, to complete the first ever skeletal mount of a dinosaur, which debuted at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1868 and sparked a “dinosaur fever” exceeding even that brought about by Hawkins’ Crystal Palace creations. The crowds to see Hadrosaurus were so huge and so frequent that the museum had to start charging admission and move to a completely new building to handle the load. Dinosaurs were no longer the domain of the university professor - they were now a significant part of general culture.
Leidy’s work on Hadrosaurus influenced Some Guy named Edward Drinker Cope, and since this is Palaeoblr you all know what happened after that: The Great Dinosaur Rush, innumerable species described, etc. etc.
The three pictures above are the bones themselves, still tucked away in the Academy’s collections - one of America’s oldest dinosaurs and surely among its most important.
“yeah but it’s still crappy material”
PERHAPS YOU’RE FORGETTING SOMEONE?
Say hello to Hadrosaurus minor - the SECOND species of Hadrosaurus.
Is it a “complete” skeleton by our modern definiton? No. But we do have a bit more of it, and it’s rather unfortunately named because it’s quite a bit bigger than H. foulkii, the one everyone knows.
The above picture is from a book by Bill Gallagher and doesn’t show much of it - but if people request it, I can get some high-quality images from the collections once I’m back there tonight.
Still not convinced to vote for these fine specimens? It’s TIME TO PULL AT YOUR HEARTSTRINGS
The only unfortunate thing about Hadrosaurus is that the material is afflicted by something called “pyrite disease” - they’re full of tiny bits of pyrite that will slowly expand if exposed to air or water. A museum collection is of course a very safe, organized, and monitored place to store these fossils, but a hundred and fifty years of time are taking their toll. We’re doing our best to keep them intact, as did Leidy, but IMO he overdid it on the shellac a bit. It’s a little bittersweet that such historically important specimens are in such danger of disappearing and being lost to science.
And one final note: I respectfully call shenanigans on the comment made by @i-draws-dinosaurs implying that H. foulkii was a nomen dubium for a long time. Yes, it’s true that a case was made, but it lasted only five years before a thorough redescription showing the contrary was published.
TLDR: If we don’t remember where we’ve been, how the hell can we expect to know where we’re going?
