SAUROPOD GENUS CAMARASAURUS. 387 



Occurrence and Collecting of Material. 



Original Discovery and Collecting. — In the spring of 1877 Mr. 

 O. W. Lucas, superintendent of public schools in Canyon City, Colo- 

 rado, discovered some large fossil bones, which he sent to Professor 

 Edward D. Cope. The date of this discovery is not definitely known, 

 but it appears to have been some time in March. From the first 

 specimens which reached the Cope Museum in Philadelphia, Cope 

 made his original description of Camarasaurus and founded the 

 genus ; this description was published August 23, 1877. The name 

 Camarasaurus, or " chambered saurian," was given in reference to 

 the cavernous nature of the centra of the cervical and dorsal ver- 

 tebrae, in connection with the lateral cavities now known as pleuro- 

 coelia. After receiving the original bones. Cope employed collectors 

 who gathered more material, all of which is now in the American 

 Museum. 



Subsequent Collecting. — The amount of material collected by 

 Cope's parties was very large. It was not all prepared at once, but a 

 considerable amount of it was cleaned up by Jacob Geismar under 

 Professor Cope's direction. In 1877 a reconstruction of the skeleton 

 of Camarasaurus was made by Dr. John A. Ryder, under the direc- 

 tion of Professor Cope. This reconstruction, the first ever made of 

 a sauropod dinosaur, was natural size and embodied representations 

 of the remains of a number of individuals; it was over fifty feet in 

 length. It was exhibited at a meeting of The American Philosophical 

 Society on December 21, 1877, and since has been exhibited a num- 

 ber of times at the American Museum (where it is now preserved) 

 and elsewhere. A greatly reduced copy of it was published by Mook 

 in 1914.^ 



After the collecting of the material which formed the basis of the 

 above-mentioned reconstruction, Cope's collectors sent in more ma- 

 terial. This collecting was continued until 1880. 



The Quarries. — Unfortunately the quarry records of the Cope 

 Canyon City material have been lost ; no quarry diagrams are men- 

 tioned in any of Cope's descriptions, and it is unlikely that any were 



2 " Notes on Camarasaurus Cope," by Charles C. Mook, Ann. New York 

 Acad. Sci., Vol. XXIV., pp. 19-22, May 21, 1914, i fig. 



