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SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. j6 



EXPEDITION TO THE DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT, UTAH 



The department of geology of the United States National Museum 

 has long been desirous of obtaining a mountable skeleton of one of the 

 large sauropodous dinosaurs to be utihzed as a central feature in the 

 main hall devoted to the exhibit of fossil vertebrates. In the latter 

 part of 1922, the opportunity for securing such a skeleton was pre- 

 sented w^hen the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh abandoned opera- 



FiG. 16. — Sign on the Victory Highway near Jensen, Utah, directing 

 visitors to the Dinosaur National Monument. Erected by the Vernal Cham- 

 ber of Commerce. (Photograph by C. W. Gilmorc.) 



tions at the Dinosaur National Monument in northeastern L tab. In the 

 course of their final excavating, the Carnegie collectors uncovered 

 two partially articulated skeletons of Diplodocus, which were left 

 in situ, since a sufficient amount of such material had already been 

 secured. When this fact and the intention of the Carnegie ^Museum 

 to cease operations in the region were communicated to the officials 

 of the Smithsonian Institution, plans were formulated for taking up 

 the work, and in Alay, 1923, Mr. C. W. Gilmore, curator of vertebrate 

 paleontology, was detailed to take charge of such operations as were 

 necessary to secure a mountable skeleton of one of these huge reptiles. 



