Leidy's Fossil Collectors
Most of today's paleontologists go into the field to collect the fossils they study, but it was common practice for the early paleontologists to depend on others for their fossils. Joseph Leidy was no exception (1). Leidy received fossils from numerous collectors, but several stand out: Ferdinand V. Hayden, David Dale Owen, J. Van Allen Carter, Joseph K. Corson, the Culbertson family and William Parker Foulke.
Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden (1829-1887) was Leidy's single most important collector. Hayden was first trained as a doctor, but he abandoned medicine when he was sent by James Hall (the New York State Geologist) to explore the White River Badlands of South Dakota. There, Hayden fell in love with the West.
Leidy first met Hayden in 1853 while inspecting some of Hall's fossils. Afterwards they developed a partnership that would last for decades. Leidy used his influence to help raise money for Hayden's many western expeditions. He also helped secure Hayden an associate professorship at the Univerisity of Pennsylvania. Hayden would send Leidy his fossils.
Hayden made several trips to the Northern Great Plains and Rocky Mountains. Early in his career, he earned the name "he who picks up rocks running" by the Sioux, who probably considered him crazy, but harmless.
Following the Civil War, Hayden led geographic and geologic surveys of the Nebraska and Western Territories for the United States Government. His work laid the foundation for the U. S. Geologic Survey and he was instrumental in the creation of Yellowstone National Park. Hayden lobbied heavily to become the first director of the U. S. Geologic Survey, but lost in a power struggle that involved O. C. Marsh. (Hayden had earned Marsh's wrath largely because he had enlisted Marsh's arch rival, E. D. Cope, for his survey of the Western Territories.)
Over the years, Hayden had collected some of Leidy's most important fossils.These include specimens from the White River Badlands (Oligocene) in South Dakota, the Niobrara River Valley (Miocene) in Nebraska, and the Bridger Formation (Eocene) in Wyoming. He also collected the first American dinosaur fossils at the mouth of the Judith River in Montana. Hayden wrote an introductory chapter on geology in Leidy's 1869 monograph, On the Extinct Mammalian Fauna of Dakota and Nebraska, and published Leidy's 1873 monograph, Extinct Vertebrate Fauna of the Western Territories, as the first volume of his Survey of the Western Territories (otherwise known as the Hayden Survey).
David Dale Owen (1807-1860), was the State Geololgist for Indiana. He conducted a number of important geologic surveys of several mid-western states. Owen discovered a partial skeleton of Megalonyx jeffersonii, a Pleistocene ground sloth, during a survey of Kentucky. This specimen was the most complete skeleton of Megalonyx then known. This fossil became the centerpiece of Leidy's 1855 publication "A Memoir of the Extinct Sloth Tribe of North America".
D. D. Owen was also one of Leidy's major suppliers of other fossils. During a federal survey of Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, Owen sent his assistant, John Evans, to conduct one of the earliest geological surveys of the White River Badlands of South Dakota. Leidy contributed a section on vertebrate paleontology for Owen's1850 report of this survey, and the fossils Owen supplied were an important part of Leidy's 1853 monograph Extinct Fauna of Nebraska.
J. Van Allan Carter was a local doctor and Joseph K. Corson was the Army surgeon at Fort Bridger, southeastern Wyoming. Together they collected most of the Eocene Bridger fossils studied by Leidy. Corson, a native Philadelphian, was a family friend of the Leidys. Joseph and Anna Leidy visited him in 1872, 1873 and 1878. Although these visits were essentially family visits, Leidy spent some of the time during the first and second visits searching for fossils. (He had already abandoned paleontology by the third visit in 1878.) Many of the fossils collected by Carter and Corson were presented in Leidy's 1873 monograph Contributions to the Extinct Vertebrate Fauna of the Western Territories.
The Culbertson family provided Leidy with fossils from the White River Badlands of South Dakota. The most notable of these were the first specimens of an early camel, Poebrotherium wilsoni, and the oreodont, Merycoidodon culbertsonii.These fossils came to Leidy in a roundabout fashion. Alexander Culbertson, who worked for the American Fur Company, had collected these fossils from the Badlands and sent them as curiosities to his uncle, Samuel Culbertson of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The fossils were later sent to Leidy for examination.
Another relative, Thaddeus A. Culbertson, was sent by Spencer Baird of the Smithsonian on a survey of the White River Badlands. The fossils he collected were forwarded by Baird to Leidy.
William Parker Foulke was responsible for the discovery of Joseph Leidy's most famous fossil animal, Hadrosaurus foulkii. Foulke was a member and patron of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Websites:
- Clark
Kimberling's web page on David Dale Owen:
faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/bstud/owen.html - Smithsonian's
web page on its early expeditions to the American West, including a section on
F. V. Hayden:
http://www.150.si.edu/chap3/three.htm
Notes:
-
Leidy
had planned to join a geological expedition to the Territories of Nebraska and
Oregon in 1853, but on the advice of his friend Spencer Baird, he chose to remain
in Philadelphia to actively pursue his appointment as the Professor of Anatomy
at the University of Pennsylvania.
Leidy finally travelled to Fort Bridger (southwestern Wyoming) in 1872. By then, however, he was a family man in his late forties. While he engaged in some fossil collecting, the trip was more of a family vacation and natural history excursion than a collecting expedition. He returned to Fort Bridger again in 1873 and 1878.
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