Of all the specimens of Archæopteryx, this is the only one with a skull. It was found in 1874 by a farmer named Jakob Niemeyer, who sold it to an innkeeper, Johann Dörr, to decorate his bar. It is now in the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin.
The best specimen of them all has a mysterious beginning. It was the property of a collector in Switzerland, whose wife – after his death in 2001 – offered it for sale to the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. They lacked the funds to purchase it until Burkhard Pohl, who founded the Wyoming Dinosaur Center (WDC) in Thermopolis, put them in contact with an anonymous benefactor who came up with the funds. It was put on public display in Frankfurt, and then in 2007 was transferred to Wyoming. German palæontologists were horrified, and began a protest petition. Although no law had been broken by the export of the fossil, it would be unavailable for easy access by German investigators, and would also be passing from a state museum in Frankfurt to a privately owned collection in Wyoming. The directors of the WDC formally issued a statement, saying that the specimen would at all times be freely available for scholarship and study, which mollified the protestors and peace was resumed. This, now known as the Thermopolis Specimen, shows a perfectly preserved skeleton and has been expertly curated. It also retains voluminous sprays of feathers on the body and the wings, and is believed to be the most vivid and perfectly preserved of them all. It has become a key item of evidence in the continuing debate about whether Archæopteryx was truly the first bird or was closer to the dinosaur end of the evolutionary spectrum. It was described in 2005 as having ‘theropod features’ because of the angle of one of its toes; mentioning a connection with meat-eating dinosaurs is a great way to attract maximum attention. Yet nobody knows where it was originally found.18
This specimen was subsequently named Archæopteryx siemensii, and it is not only the best of them all, but is the only one on display outside Europe. It resides in America, and in that sense it is unique.
4
It was just when Darwin’s book on evolution was published that America entered the dinosaur race. Fossils were already well known in the U.S.; apart from the ‘Ohio Animal’, innumerable invertebrates had been regularly collected by enthusiasts. A detailed account of animal fossils had been published in the American Journal of Science and Arts as early as 1820.1
The first dinosaur fossils to be found by geologists in North America were discovered in 1854 by Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden, a surgeon turned geologist, while he was exploring the Missouri River near its confluence with the Judith River. His team found a few teeth that could not be identified, so they were taken to Joseph Leidy, a knowledgeable geologist who was also Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. In 1856 Leidy published a paper that launched North American palæontology, and at the time he was the leading authority on the subject outside of Europe.2
The teeth Hayden had found eventually turned out to represent the remains of three dinosaur genera that were named Trachodon, Troodon and Deinodon. Hayden published his findings two years later, in which he briefly reported discovering teeth that Leidy had found to be from ‘two or three genera of large Saurians allied to the Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, etc’. It was becoming apparent that dinosaurs were not only to be found in the Old World; they were also relics of prehistoric America. This was a startling revelation to science. Hayden went on to lead the first major exploration of Yellowstone in 1871, and it was his report that led to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park.3
The discovery of the first near-complete dinosaur skeleton in the U.S. would revolutionize palæontology and it was announced by a keen amateur naturalist, William Parker Foulke. He was born in Philadelphia in 1816 and came from a Welsh family of Quakers who had emigrated to America in 1698. Foulke was a successful lawyer and became a prominent campaigner for civil rights. He opposed slavery, fought for prison reform, published political pamphlets, and was a prominent philanthropist. He was also an enthusiast for geology and became a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences. In 1858, just as the papers by Wallace and Darwin on evolution were being read at the Linnean Society of London and two years after Leidy had confirmed the discovery of dinosaur teeth, Foulke was staying in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and was discussing the lie of the land with John Hopkins, who farmed nearby. Hopkins was in the habit of excavating marl from a tributary of the nearby Cooper River for use as a lime-rich soil dressing. He mentioned to Foulke that, some 20 years before, workmen had dug out some huge black bones. He still had a few at his home. Foulke inquired where they came from, but the farmer tersely explained that the purpose of the work was to acquire lime for the farm, not to provide bones for a philosopher. He had thought no more about them. Foulke asked him if the digging could be resumed, to see if further bones could be found, but when they walked across to see the old digging site it had become overgrown with vegetation and much of the marl outcrop had been eroded. One of the workmen was asked to come to look at the site, but he couldn’t identify where the bones had been found and for a day or two they excavated in the wrong place. Then the worker had a brainwave – changing position, they dug down about 10 feet (3 metres) and suddenly came across a large bone. It was heavily impregnated with iron and was as black as coal. Careful excavation soon revealed the left side of a large skeleton, including 28 vertebræ, much of the pelvis and almost all the four limbs. As is the curious case with many herbivorous dinosaur fossils, there was no sign of a skull. The bones were in fragments, each of which was carefully cleaned, measured and drawn, before they were packed in straw and transported by horse and cart to Foulke’s premises less than a mile away. The skeleton proved to be that of a new type of dinosaur, which was named Hadrosaurus from the Greek ἁδρός (hadros, large) and σαῦρος (sauros, lizard). Analysis of the anatomy showed that, like Iguanodon, it seemed to stand erect and walked on its hindlegs.
Joseph Leidy, who had now become known as the nation’s leading palæontologist, was informed of the discovery by Foulke. As Leidy arrived on site he went with Foulke to the