After consultation we
decided that they were too much broken to be worth saving--and so most
of them went over into the dump. Sacrilege, doubtless, the modern
collector will say, but we did not know much about the modern methods
of collecting in those days, and moreover we were in too much of a
hurry to get the new discoveries to Yale College to take much pains
with them. I did observe that the caudal vertebrae had very peculiar
chevrons, unlike others that I had seen, and so I attempted to save
some samples of them by pasting them up with thick layers of paper.
Had we only known of plaster-of-paris and burlap the whole specimen
might easily have been saved. Later, when I reached New Haven, I took
off the paper and called Professor Marsh's attention to the strange
chevrons. And _Diplodocus_ was the result.
[Illustration: Fig. 44.--The first dinosaur specimen found at
Bone-Cabin Quarry. Hind limb of _Diplodocus_.]
My own connection with the discoveries of these old dinosaurs
continued only through the following summer, in Wyoming, when we added
the first mammals from the hills immediately back of the station, and
the types of some of the smaller dinosaurs, and when we explored the
vicinity for other deposits, on Rock Creek and in the Freeze Out
Mountains.
How many tons of these fossils have since been dug up from these
deposits in the Rocky Mountains is beyond computation. My prophecy of
hundreds of tons has been fulfilled; and they are preserved in many
museums of the world.
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