THE TITANOTHERES OF ANCIENT WYOMING, DAKOTA, 



AND NEBRASKA 



By Henry Fairfield Osborn 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTION TO MAMMALIAN PALEONTOLOGY 



SECTION 1. EXPLORATION AND RESEARCH MADE IN 

 THE PREPARATION OF THIS MONOGRAPH 



The preparation of this monograph was actually 

 begun in 1846, when a part of a jawbone of a titano- 

 there was found in the region now known as South 

 Dakota and sent first to Dr. Hiram A. Prout of St. 

 Louis and then to Dr. 

 Joseph Leidy of Phila- 

 delphia for description. 

 This bit of bone gave the 

 first hint to science of 

 the wonderful deposits 

 of vertebrate fossils in 

 the Rocky Mountain 

 region that have revo- 

 lutionized vertebrate 

 paleontology. The de- 

 tails of this epoch-mak- 

 ing discovery are given 

 in Chapter III. The 

 original fragment bears 

 the generic name Meno- 

 dus, which was assigned 

 to it by the keen system- 

 atic paleontologist of 



France, Nicolas Auguste Pomel,who gave it the specific 

 name giganteus. Menodus giganteus is thus the first 

 titanothere known to science, and it is a representative 

 of the most imposing family of mammals that was 

 evolved in ancient North America. 



Figure 1. — "Fragment of the inferior maxillary of the left side' 

 Front's "gigantic Palaeotherium," the first titanothere discovered 

 After Prout (1847). One-fourth natural size. 



of America — Joseph Leidy, Edward Drinker Cope, 

 Othniel Charles Marsh, John Bell Hatcher — up to 

 the time when the whole long and difficult study of 

 family history, of geologic succession, and of environ- 

 ment was intrusted to the present author. 



From the first it seemed desirable that this study 

 should encompass more 

 than a dry, systematic 

 description — that these 

 animals and their envi- 

 ronment should, so far 

 as possible through pale- 

 ontology, be made to 

 live again as the domi- 

 nant animals of a long 

 and very interesting 

 epoch in the history of 

 North America — the 

 first third of the Terti- 

 ary period. The field 

 explorations made in 

 the prosecution of this 

 research should, more- 

 over, sustain the guiding 

 principles of the union 

 of paleontology and geology established by the pioneers 

 of our national surveys, as seen especially in the com- 

 bined work of the geologist, Frederick V. Hayden, and 

 the paleontologists, Charles A.White and Joseph Leidy,^ 

 whose reports are still fundamental standards of Terti- 



FiGURE 2. — Tj'pe of Palaeotherium ? proutii 

 Owen's specimen, Nat. Mus. 113. After Leidy (1852). One-third natural size. This was one of the specimens referred to by 

 Leidy (1852.1)1 in proposing the name Titanolherium. 



This family, from its earliest known beginnings in the 

 Wind River Mountains of the present State of Wyoming 

 to the height of its development on the plains of the 

 ancient Dakota- Nebraska -Colorado region, attracted 

 the attention of the leading vertebrate paleontologists 



1 The figures in parentheses refer to entries i 

 chapter. 



, the bibliography at the end of this 



ary geologic and paleontologic history. Subsequent 

 works have surpassed these in specialization and in 

 number and variety of animal forms, and the geologic 

 areas and life zones have been greatly increased by 

 subsequent discovery, but none have surpassed them 



' See reports of Hayden and White (1867-73.1, 1868.1), based on surveys begin- 

 ning in 1802, and Leidy's great memoh (1869.1). 



