Vertebrate Paleontology

Special Projects

Marsh’s Dinosaurs

One recent project in the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology Preparation Lab was the conservation of an important part of the Yale Peabody Museum’s dinosaur collection.


Left: Marsh’s
reconstruction
of Stegosuarus.

About 100 years ago, a massive collection of dinosaur fossils was begun under the famous paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh. The bones that you see in the Great Hall are only a part of this collection. The rest are stored beneath the Museum, available for research to scientists and students of paleontology from around the world. These fossils include the first described specimens (type specimens) of several of the most famous dinosaur species, such as Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus, Camarasaurus and Barosaurus.

Over time the glues used to join these bones together had failed, and the bones became disarranged. With a grant from the National Science Foundation to repair, support and conserve this scientific treasure, Assistant Preparator Vicki Fitzgerald and our skilled Lab volunteers spent hundreds of hours cleaning, regluing and building supports for hundreds of bones. This project has made it possible for these fossils to last for another 100 years, so that paleontologists of the future may study them too.

This femur of the type specimen of Diplodocus longus had never been glued together, so Assistant Preparator Vicki Fitzgerald, aided by our volunteers and by then graduate student Alan Gishlick, carefully pieced together the fragments to reconstruct the whole bone. This specimen can now be accurately measured and studied.


Dr. John McIntosh, a world-renowned sauropod expert, has worked on the specimens in Peabody’s collection for over 40 years. His assistance was invaluable during our conservation project. Here he is in the Lab, studying some of the bones being conserved.


This scapula (shoulder blade) of Camarasaurus grandis has been glued together and a plaster jacket made for it, so that the bone is supported and available for scientists to study.

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Princeton Collection

In 1985, when Princeton University ceased it paleontology program, the Yale Peabody Museum acquired the specimens of the Princeton Collection. We are now involved in a National Science Foundation funded grant to conserve this part of the Peabody paleontology collection. All of the specimens will be re-housed in foam-lined, inert specimen trays, to support and protect them for future research. Like most of our collections these specimens, although not on public display, are extensively studied by scientists from all over the world. Conservation projects like this one are vital to the Museum because they help us to maintain our important fossils.

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