Allosaurus Munching on an Apatosaurus Tail: Legendry Mount at the AMNH

Leave my sauropod alone!

#Allosaurus AMNH FARB 5753 (Fish. Amphibians. Reptiles. Birds. Now you know :-)) portrayed munching on the tail of my beloved #Apatosaurus at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

This mount is legendary for many reasons, let’s talk about a few.

Charles Knight has a painting based on it, which filled my youthful self with a sense of awe and wonder. Truth be told, it still does. Knight was a genius!

The Apatosaurus, AMNH FARB 222, has tooth marks on it and allegedly Allosaurus teeth were found nearby, which gave some inspiration to the mount, which was the first free-standing #theropod #dinosaur mount in the world back in 1907. And probably the first munching on a sauropod.

This Allosaurus has never been described! Cope had this at-the-time-most-complete Allosaurus sitting in boxes and he didn’t open them. I doubt he knew just how complete this skeleton was. Instead of “in-your-face-Marsh” he tinkered with scrappy specimens. And, because Cope didn’t mark them as important crates, according to Breithaupt et al. 1999, these were some of the last of the Cope crates the AMNH opened.

Osborn, a big boss at the AMNH, upon realizing what he had, promptly had them mounted. Alas, even if Cope had known of ‘em, he’d of simply called it a new genus and, at best, given us a single illustration.

Now that it is on display, it is unlikely it’ll be described, unless during the AMNH’s next dino hall redo they choose to take it down and CT scan each bone, as that’d be the only way to know for sure what is original and what is plaster.

Plates (exquisite illustrations) were done but never published. I have been seeking them and, alas, none know where they are today within the massive building. They were last seen in the early 2000s.

The Apatosaurus I don’t believe was described, either. Parts of it on are on the big mount, parts here, and more in the collections. It appears we academics have many, many specimens in our possession that we haven’t properly touched. Time to get to work!

#FossilCrates

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