How A Case of Mistaken Dinosaur Identity Became the Story of A Brand New Dinosaur
By Melissa Walker

“Fossils are windows into past worlds. They tell us stories that would otherwise go untold.
Kirk Johnson, PhD
Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

Dinosaur Fossil Discovered, then Forgotten
In 1878, Professor James H. Kerr of Colorado College discovered a dinosaur skull “in one of the ridges east of the red rocks of the Garden of the Gods.” A few years later, the famous dinosaur collector O.C. Marsh obtained the fossil skull, identified it as a Camptosaurus dinosaur, and shipped it to the Yale Museum in New Haven, Connecticut.

Then, somehow over the decades, knowledge of the 1878 dinosaur discovery became lost to the Colorado Springs community. While the dinosaur fossil safely rested in the Yale Museum, it was forgotten about locally -for over a century.