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Formerly Amphicoelias Fragillimus), a Basal Rebbachisaurid from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Colorado

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Formerly Amphicoelias Fragillimus), a Basal Rebbachisaurid from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Colorado GEOLOGY OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST an open-access journal of the Utah Geological Association ISSN 2380-7601 Volume 5 2018 MARAAPUNISAURUS FRAGILLIMUS, N.G. (FORMERLY AMPHICOELIAS FRAGILLIMUS), A BASAL REBBACHISAURID FROM THE MORRISON FORMATION (UPPER JURASSIC) OF COLORADO Kenneth Carpenter Theme Issue An Ecosystem We Thought We Knew— The Emerging Complexities of the Morrison Formation SOCIETY OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY Annual Meeting, October 26 – 29, 2016 Grand America Hotel Salt Lake City, Utah, USA © 2018 Utah Geological Association. All rights reserved. For permission to copy and distribute, see the following page or visit the UGA website at www.utahgeology.org for information. Email inquiries to [email protected]. GEOLOGY OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST an open-access journal of the Utah Geological Association ISSN 2380-7601 Volume 5 2018 Editors UGA Board Douglas A. Sprinkel Thomas C. Chidsey, Jr. October 2018 – September 2019 Utah Geological Survey Utah Geological Survey President Peter Nielsen [email protected] 801.537.3359 801.391.1977 801.537.3364 President-Elect Leslie Heppler [email protected] 801.538.5257 [email protected] [email protected] Program Chair Gregory Schlenker [email protected] 801.745.0262 Treasurer Dave Garbrecht [email protected] 801.916.1911 Bart J. Kowallis Steven Schamel Secretary George Condrat [email protected] 435.649.4005 Brigham Young University GeoX Consulting, Inc. 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Trujillo — University of Wyoming John Foster — Utah Field House of Natural History State Mapping Advisory Committe State Park Museum UGA Representative Jason Blake [email protected] 435.658.3423 Cary Woodruff — University of Toronto Octavio Mateus — Universidade Nova de Lisboa Earthquake Safety Committe Production Chair Grant Willis [email protected] 801.537.3355 Cover Design and Desktop Publishing UGA Website Douglas A. Sprinkel www.utahgeology.org Cover Webmasters Paul Inkenbrandt [email protected] 801.537.3361 The controversial vertebra ofMaraapunisaurus fragillimus (formerly Amphicoelias fragillimus) and UGA Newsletter Edward D. Cope who described the specimen in 1878. Newsletter Editor Bill Lund [email protected] 435.590.1338 Become a member of the UGA to help support the work of the Association and receive notices for monthly meetings, annual field conferences, and new publi- cations. Annual membership is $20 and annual student membership is only $5. Visit the UGA website at www.utahgeology.org for information and membership application. This is an open-access article in which the Utah The UGA board is elected annually by a voting process through UGA members. Geological Association permits unrestricted use, However, the UGA is a volunteer-driven organization, and we welcome your distribution, and reproduction of text and figures that voluntary service. If you would like to participate please contact the current are not noted as copyrighted, provided the original president or committee member corresponding with the area in which you would author and source are credited. like to volunteer. Utah Geological Association formed in 1970 from a merger of the Utah Geological Society, founded in 1946, and the Intermountain Association of Geologists, founded in 1949. Affiliated with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. i GEOLOGY OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST an open-access journal of the Utah Geological Association Volume 5 2018 Maraapunisaurus fragillimus, N.G. (Formerly Amphicoelias fragillimus), A Basal Rebbachisaurid From the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Colorado Kenneth Carpenter Prehistoric Museum, Utah State University Eastern, 155 East Main St., Price, UT 84501; [email protected]; University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, Henderson Building, 15th and Broadway, Boulder, CO 80309 ABSTRACT In 1878, Oramel Lucas shipped to E.D. Cope of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, a huge 1.5-m-tall neural spine from the dorsal vertebra of a sauropod (from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation) that Cope named and illustrated as Amphicoelis fragillimus. The holotype was lost and all that is known of the specimen is from Cope’s original publication. Reanalysis of Cope’s publication in light of other sauropods discovered since 1878 indicates that Amphicoelias fragillimus is a basal rebbachisaurid characterized by pneumatic neural spine and arch, and the unambiguous rebbachisaurid character of a festooned spinodiapophyseal lamina. Because the specimen can no longer be referred to the basal diplodo- coid Amphicoelias, the genus name is replaced with Maraapunisaurus n.g. As a rebbachisaurid, revised dimensions indicate a dorsal vertebra 2.4 m tall and a head–to–tail length for the animal of 30.3 to 32 m, significantly less than previous estimates. INTRODUCTION estimation was never challenged by Cope’s contempo- raries, nor later by Henry Osborn and Charles Mook Between 1877 and 1884, school teacher Oramel Lu- of the American Museum of Natural History in their cas and his brother Ira discovered and excavated numer- monograph of the Cope sauropod collection (Osborn ous dinosaur specimens from the vicinity of a promi- and Mook, 1921). Only more recently have questions nent conical hill (a.k.a. “Cope’s Nipple,” “the Nipple,” “Saurian Hill”) of Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation been raised about this specimen in the debate about the in Garden Park north of Cañon City, Colorado (for his- maximum possible size of terrestrial vertebrates (Paul, torical review see Carpenter, in press). Among the spec- 1998; Mazzetta and others, 2004; Carpenter, 2006a; Per- imens shipped by Oramel Lucas to Edward D. Cope, ry and others, 2009; Woodruff and Foster, 2014). loosely affiliated with the Academy of Natural Sciences Osborn and Mook’s access to Cope’s sauropods was of Philadelphia, in 1878 was a huge neural spine. The made possible by the purchase of the Cope zoological specimen was described and illustrated as Amphicoelias and paleontological specimens by the American Muse- fragillimus by Cope (1878f: 564) who wrote that “the to- um of Natural History, much to the consternation of the tal elevation of this vertebra, when complete, was not Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, which had less than six feet, and probably more” (figure 1A). This hoped to acquire the collections (Anonymous, 1899). Citation for this article. Carpenter, K., 2018, Maraapunisaurus fragillimus, n.g. (formerly Amphicoelias fragillimus), a basal rebbachisaurid from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Colorado: Geology of the Intermountain West, v. 5, p. 227–244. © 2018 Utah Geological Association. All rights reserved. For permission to use, copy, or distribute see the preceeding page or the UGA website, www.utahgeology.org, for information. Email inquiries to [email protected]. 227 Maraapunisaurus fragillimus, N.G. (Formerly Amphicoelias fragillimus), A Basal Rebbachisaurid From the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Colorado Carpenter, K. Figure 1. Illustrations of different sauropod dorsals made by Cope to show why he thought that the neural spine of Amphico" - elias" fragillimus (A) was most similar to that of Amphicoelias altus (B) than to Camarasaurus supremus (C, mid-dorsal; D, more posterior mid-dorsal). Scale = 1 m. B to D from Cope 1878b; A from Cope 1878f. Because of financial reasons, Cope began negotiating collections was not rushed, but took several years, with with the American Museum in April 1894 to purchase the last of the collections not arriving at the American parts of his collections with his friend Henry Osborn Museum until 1903, six years after Cope’s death (Jesup, acting as a middleman (Osborn, 1931). Although this 1896, 1898, 1899, 1900, 1901, 1903). Osborn, who was would be considered a conflict of interest today, Cope head of vertebrate paleontology, put William D. Mat- counted on his friend’s honesty to help him leverage the thew, curator at the museum, in charge of the vertebrate best possible prices and to recoup the estimated $50,000 fossil collection transfers (Mathew, 1915, p. 38; Osborn (~ $1.5 million in 2018) of personal money spent. The and Mook, 1921; Osborn, 1931; Colbert, 1992, p. 51– Cañon City dinosaurs were part of the final sale nego- 53). Matthew was aided by Albert Thompson and Jim tiated with the Cope estate in 1897 a few months after Young, also of the American Museum (Osborn, 1931). his death at age 54. In the end, the American Museum Some of Cope’s collections were at his house on Pine spent $60,550 (~ $1.8 million in 2018) for just the four Street in Philadelphia, but a larger portion was in stor- vertebrate fossil collections alone (Osborn, 1931). age a few miles away in the lower level of the Memorial The process of examining, packing and shipping the Hall building in Fairmont Park (Matthew, 1915). Once Geology of the Intermountain West 228 2018 Volume 5 Maraapunisaurus fragillimus, N.G. (Formerly Amphicoelias fragillimus), A Basal Rebbachisaurid From the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Colorado Carpenter, K. the collections arrived at the American Museum, the mandible of Laelaps trihedrodon, and parts of the types cataloguing of the specimens was handled by Walter of Camarasaurus leptodirus and Amphicoelias latus (Os- Granger, Albert Thompson, and William Matthew (see born and Mook, 1921; Chure, 2001).
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