ANATOTITAN,  

                                                                COPEI

 

Text Box: Seventy-five million years ago Carter County was the home of many various species of dinosaurs and their contemporaries living in and along the marshes that bordered the retreating Pierre Sea. which covered much of Eastern Montana. Today, their remains are being retrieved from the shale and sands where they were entombed.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                   

 

Text Box:  Ted Snyder above &Walter H. Peck, right, at the dig site in 1938.  

 

 

 

Text Box: Hadrosaurids were the last group of Ornithopods to evolve, appearing as they did in the middle of the Cretaceous period. They evolved spectacularly into a remarkable variety of types, the main differences between the many species are found in the shape of the heads; the bodies of virtually all the Hadrosaurids are remarkably similar with only slightly differently shaped hip-bones. Although Hadrosaurids stood comfortably on their well developed hind legs, it is believed that they walked on all fours as well. They could attain a height of 16 feet; and reach about 35 - 40 feet long. They had no thumbs at all. However, all had very powerful jaw muscles and abrasive batteries of teeth in each jaw. The teeth were cemented together by bony tissue and formed a long grinding surface lake a rasp or a carpenter's coarse file, which could have been used to pound up tough plants, even woody twigs. The Cretaceous period marks the arrival of the first flowering plants. This change over seems to coincide with the changing fortunes of the plant eating Dinosaurs. It is believed that Hadrosaurids nested in colony nest sites and that they had annual nesting habits, as they seemly returned to the same sites year after year.

 

 

 

 

 

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Discovered on the William Winkley Ranch, approximately 30 miles west of Ekalaka, this giant Hadrosaur was excavated by Walter H. Peck and Ted Snyder along with other members of the Carter County Geological Society during the summer of 1938.

The 1938, expedition co-sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Carter County Geological Society, with Peck and Snyder representing the Society, originally believed they had discovered the skeleton of a Trachadon mirabilis. However, once the abdominal ribs had been unearthed they knew they may have located a dinosaur of a new species, because the ribs they unearthed were not those found in members of the Trachadon family.

Peck & Snyder's discovery was later identified as an Anatosaurus copei*, a genus name that was to stick until the late1990's, when scientists decided that the 5 known Hadrosaurs were sufficiently different from the others Hadrosaurs falling within the Anatosaurs genus, especially in size and the genus was separated and renamed Anatotitan copei meaning giant "duck-billed" Hadrosaur.

* So named for the famous American Paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope, who found the original specimen in 1882.