On our way home, we stopped in New Jersey so we could visit the site where the first partially complete dinosaur skeleton was discovered. Prior to this discovery, dinosaurs were known only from scattered bone fragments and teeth.
Amateur naturalist William Parker Foulke heard that local workmen digging in a nearby marl pit had unearthed several gigantic bones. Organizing his own team of diggers to investigate, he soon discovered the fossilized partial skeleton of a bipedal creature with features similar to both a bird and a reptile.
The strange prehistoric beast was later identified as a dinosaur by Joseph Leidy, a naturalist from the nearby Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Leidy gave the fossil the taxonomic name Hadrosaurus foulkii, after its discoverer.
We found out about this site from Atlas Obscura, and Johnny loves his dinosaurs!
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