Barnum Brown Discovery Location

[Ritz]

Hey everybody. I was reading about Barnum Brown's T-Rex discovery from 1902, and I couldn't seem to find a specific location anywhere! I know that the discovery was made in southeast Montana at a Hell Creek formation, but I need a more precise area. Does anyone happen to know?

[Raggedy Man]

You probably will not find the exact location published.

[jpc]

It was not in southeast MT but rather towards Jordan, which is arguably north central. But I agree w raggedy man, a more detailed description probably does not exist. This is one of the last parts of the lower 48to be settled by white folks, so in the early 1900's detailed mapping had yet to be done.

[Arion]

Dawson County 220 feet above the Ft. Pierre is what's published in the original description (http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/bitstream/handle/2246/1464//v2/dspace/ingest/pdfSource/bul/B021a14.pdf?sequence=1), but not much beyond that. The type locality for Dynamosaurus is much more detailed.

(Side note, gotta love the diagnoses in those days: 'carnivorous dinosaur attaining a very large size; humerus believed to be of large size and robust; no evidence of bony dermal plates' )

(Side note #2: I've always wondered if Albertosaurus shouldn't actually be Albertasaura, since it's named after the province of Alberta, which is in turn named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria; hence the province name is feminine and the dinosaur named after it should also have the feminine form of the name too, no?)

Edited October 12, 2014 by Arion

[jpc]

Hmmmm... Dawson County. But I see that Dawson County was created in 1915 form the northern half of Big Horn County. These two counties are not even close to each other right now, so my guess is that when T rex was discovered, the badlands around Jordan were indeed in Dawson County, but are now in Garfield County which was founded in 1919. (My source is wikipedia for all this).

In a similar vein, much of the early writings about Triceratops and Dynamosaurus here in Wyoming state that they are all from Converse County, but the sites are actually in Niobrara County, which was separated from Converse after the initial dinosaur discoveries.