Distinctly Montana Magazine

50 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 4 L ONG BEFORE GRIZZLIES BECAME "COCKS OF AMERICA'S WESTERN WALKS," as his- torian John Myers Myers described them, a far more formidable apex predator roamed present-day eastern Montana. Renowned among pint-sized, would-be paleontologists and their professional peers, Tyrannosaurus rex ("tyrant lizard king") was the lord of an- tiquity during the Maastrichtian stage of the late Cretaceous Period (ca. 66-68 million years ago). The first scientific evidence of tyrannosaurids in North America was discovered in 1855 by Ferdinand Hayden. Near the mouth of the Judith River, he found several fossilized teeth, which he sent to Joseph Leidy, a paleontologist, in Phil- adelphia. Leidy concluded that these teeth were of dinosaurian origin, but they differed from those of any previously identified species. In 1856, Leidy classified the remains of this carnivore as Deinodon horridus ("horrifying terrible tooth"). Isolated skeletal elements and teeth were also collected in 1874 by Arthur Lakes near Golden, Colorado and, in 1890 and 1892, from the Lance Formation in Wyoming by John Bell Hatcher and a party from Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History. The findings of Hatcher and his colleagues predate other discoveries and initial published references to Ty- rannosaurus rex by a full decade. The holotype for T. rex, which is the name-bearing represen- tative of that species, was discovered near Haxby, an old post office north of Jordan, Montana. Excavated in 1902 by Barnum Brown, then curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Ameri- can Museum of Natural History, this fossil contains 34 bones, which comprise approximately 11% of the entire skeleton. Originally catalogued as AMNH 973, it was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (Pittsburgh) after 1941, ostensibly to ensure its survival in the event of German bombing raids against New York City. Tyrannosaurus rex entered the scientific lexicon in 1905, when Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the AMNH, published an article that introduced this species and described its holotype. In 1908, Brown struck paleontological gold in present-day McCone County, where he found a much more impressive representative of T. rex. Containing a complete skull and total of 143 bones, which include most of the rib cage, spi- nal column, and much of the tail, AMNH 5027 by DOUGLAS A. SCHMITTOU John Bell Hatcher Barnum Brown ROBERT RATH

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