Paleontology in the United States

mass extinction

mass extinction

dire wolves roamed the land. Humans

Dinosaur footprints were discovered near the country's east coast. Later in the century, as more dinosaur fossils were uncovered, eminent paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh were embroiled in a bitter rivalry

Seismosaurus", one of the largest known North American dinosaurs.^{[not verified in body}

eukaryotes, whose remains were preserved in California. Other simple Precambrian life is known from Michigan,^[1] while more complex forms in Arizona^[2] and North Carolina.^[3]

mass extinction in earth's history occurred, killing some 96% of species on the planet.^[18]

extinct, likely because a meteor impact destabilized the planet's ecosystems.^[38]

Humans arrived across a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska^[51] and may have played a role in hunting these animal into extinction.^[52]

George Cuvier and local statesmen and frontiersman like Daniel Boone,^[59] Benjamin Franklin,^[60] William Henry Harrison,^[61] Thomas Jefferson,^[62] and George Washington.^[63] They triggered controversy regarding the idea that entire species of animals could become extinct.^[64] By the end of the 18th century possible dinosaur fossils might already have been found in New Jersey.^[65]

fossil footprints definitely had been found in Massachusetts^[66] and later, Connecticut.^[67] These tracks were researched by the Reverend Edward Hitchcock and instrumental to the establishment of ichnology, the study of trace fossils, as a science.^[66] During the late 1850s, the world's first reasonably complete dinosaur skeleton was discovered in New Jersey.^[68] Joseph Leidy would name it Hadrosaurus. This was the first known dinosaur, the first dinosaur to be interpreted as two-legged, and the first to be mounted for exhibition in a museum.^[69] Later in the century Edward Drinker Cope described a new carnivorous dinosaur from New Jersey he called Laelaps. When he gave fellow paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh a tour of the quarry the fossils were taken from Marsh secretly convinced Cope's workers to send fossils to himself instead. Marsh also learned that the name Laelaps had already been used for a different animal and renamed Cope's dinosaur Dryptosaurus out from under him. This instigated a bitter rivalry to collect the most fossils and name the most new prehistoric species that took the two paleontologists and their crews deep into the west looking for fossils and attempting to undermine each other's fieldwork.^[70]

Seismosaurus" was put forward as a candidate for the largest known dinosaur.^[76]