A Wisdom Archive on amphicoelias fragillimus - discovery

The paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope discovered a partial vertebra (the neural arch) of a new species at the Morrison Formation, near the town of Morrison, Colorado. It was in poor condition, but astonishingly large, measuring 2.4 m (7.8 ft.) in height. A. fragillimus is estimated to live 140 to 150 million years ago, which places it in the late Jurassic period, specifically the Kimmeridgian to Tithonian ages. The neural arch was packaged and sent by train to a Museum in New York, but unfortunately it never arrived; apparentl ...

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The validity of the find is complicated by its discovery in the midst of the Bone Wars, an infamous period in the history of paleontology, when the two pre-eminent paleontologists of the time, Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, were competing to see who could find the most, and most sensational, new species. This competition was marred by bribery, accusations of theft, spying, politics, and virulent personal attacks. Marsh was winning the bone war. He discovered a total of 86 new species during their decades-long rivalry, ...

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Some of the largest animals ever to have existed have now died out. Most of them dinosaurs, the creatures grew to enormous sizes. The evidence of their size is shown by their fossilised remains, with the entire skeletons of many species being discovered and reconstructed. Largest organism - Complete skeletons. The tallest and heaviest dinosaur known from a complete skeleton is the Brachiosaurus (now Giraffatitan) which was discovered in Tanzania between 1907–1912, and is now mounted in the ...

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Edward Drinker Cope described his find an 1878 issue of the American Naturalist, and named it A. fragillimus. He classified it as a diplodocid, specifically a new species in the genus Amphicoelias. The genus Amphicoelias is poorly known. The first named species in the genus, Amphicoelias altus (holotype specimen AMHD 5764), was discovered by Cope the year before, in 1877. But while it is only represented by a partial skeleton, there are enough diagnostic characteristics to provisionally define the ge ...

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