Dall DeWeese & the Diplodocus

Dall DeWeese first became familiar with dinosaur excavation in the late 1880’s. He was interested in the outdoors and in 1915 he found dinosaur bones. He contacted a hunting friend with last name of Figgins who worked at the Denver Museum of Natural History.    He worked out an agreement with Figgins for the museum to pay for the excavation work and to receive the skeleton.  Figgins had some contacts with the American Museum of Natural History and had some limited knowledge of dinosaur skeletons but the Denver Museum of Natural History had no paleontology department at that time.

Starting in April of 1916 and ending in July of 1916, Dall DeWeese and two primary workers excavated everything they could find and along the way they determined that the fossils were of a Diplodocus longus.   The presentation is the story of of this important excavation. The bones today are stored in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and we have one replica of a vertebra from that collection that we show in the presentation.

Contact Dan Grenard at [email protected] to schedule this program.  The program requires a screen and projector.  Dan provides powerpoint and other materials.