page_title: History of paleontology in the United States
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: History of paleontology in the United States / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: Basilosaurus.
context_page_description: The history of paleontology in the United States refers to the developments and discoveries regarding fossils found within or by people from the United States of America. Local paleontology began informally with Native Americans, who have been familiar with fossils for thousands of years. They both told myths about them and applied them to practical purposes. African slaves also contributed their knowledge; the first reasonably accurate recorded identification of vertebrate fossils in the new world was made by slaves on a South Carolina plantation who recognized the elephant affinities of mammoth molars uncovered there in 1725. The first major fossil discovery to attract the attention of formally trained scientists were the Ice Age fossils of Kentucky's Big Bone Lick. These fossils were studied by eminent intellectuals like France's George Cuvier and local statesmen and frontiersman like Daniel Boone, Benjamin Franklin, William Henry Harrison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. By the end of the 18th century possible dinosaur fossils had already been found.
  By the beginning of the 19th, their fossil footprints definitely had.
context_section_description: Among the earliest major fossil discoveries in America occurred in Massachusetts during the spring of 1802. At that time a boy uncovered a piece of reddish sandstone with bird-like three toed footprints while ploughing on his father's farm in South Hadley. This was the first recorded dinosaur footprint discovery in North America. A short while later, Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804 through 1806 made several fossil discoveries along its journey, including the first documented fossils from what is now North Dakota. However, only a fish jawbone from Iowa remains of the fossils they collected along the way. Another significant, but unrelated event from the early 19th century was the 1817 organization of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York by Samuel L. Mitchill. In 1869 the American Museum of Natural History was organized out of the Lyceum.
  During the Late 1830s Increase Allen Lapham found a variety of fossils in great abundance in some rocky hills near Milwaukee. Lapham sent a sizable sampling of the local fossils to James Hall of New York in 1846. Hall began researching the area and in 1862 recognized the local reefs for what they were. The Silurian-aged reefs of the Milwaukee area were the first Paleozoic reefs in the world to be described for the scientific literature.
  In 1835 another major dinosaur track find occurred in Massachusetts. The town of Greenfield was paving its streets when residents noticed fossil footprints on the sandstone slabs that resembled turkey tracks. These rocks were taken from what would turn out to be the most productive dinosaur tracksite in the Connecticut Valley. Later that year, word of the find reached Amherst College geology professor Edward Hitchcock. Hitchcock spent the rest of the summer traveling through the Connecticut Valley examining the fossil footprints. The next year Hitchcock wrote a scientific paper on the fossil footprints of the Connecticut Valley. He thought the tracks were made by giant birds. In 1858, Hitchcock published again on the Connecticut Valley fossil footprints and still thought of them as bird tracks.
  In 1842, fossils were found on a plantation owned by a man named Judge Creagh. Local doctors identified the fossils as belonging to an ancient marine reptile, and called it Basilosaurus. However, some of the fossils were shipped to Sir Richard Owen in England. After examining the remains Owen realized the bones actually belonged to a whale, rather than a reptile. Herman Melville's narrator Ishmael gives an account of the discovery in chapters 104–105 of Moby-Dick (1851).
  In 1853 the Pacific Railroad Exploration survey became the first to document Arizona's petrified forest. In 1900 the United States Geological Survey dedicated a report to the petrified forest and encouraged swift action to preserve the spectacular fossils before curiosity seekers removed them all. In 1906, protective action was taken and Petrified Forest officially became a national monument.
  In 1858 the United States was home to the world's first "reasonably complete" dinosaur skeleton. A member of the Academy of Natural Sciences named William Foulke heard about fossil bones that had been found on a local farm while spending the summer in Haddonfield. That fall Foulke hired a team to reopen the marl pit the bones had been taken from. Roughly 10 feet down they found bones. Paleontologist Joseph Leidy later formally described the fossils. He interpreted the fossils as the remains of a bipedal amphibious reptile that had been swept out to sea by the river it lived alongside. Leidy called the creature Hadrosaurus foulkii after Foulke. A decade later, in 1868 Leidy worked with artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins to mount Hadrosaurus foulkii for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. This became both the first mounted dinosaur skeleton ever mounted for public display but also one of the most popular exhibits in the history of the Academy. Estimates have the Hadrosaurus exhibit as increasing the number of visitors by up to 50%.
  The year after the Hadrosaurus's fossils were first identifie
caption: Basilosaurus.
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