Name______Garden Park Fossil Area Go the the Garden Park Hands on the Land Website at https://www.handsontheland.org/garden-park/ to answer the following questions.
MAIN PAGE First, read the information on the main page. Then answer the following questions: 1. What year did fossils start being excavated from Garden Park?______2. Garden Park is near the town of ______. 3. Name two cities that have museums that these important fossils were sent to. ______and ______4. Important discoveries include the first complete skeleton of ______, some of the most complete ______skeletons, as well as the first known remains of dinosaurs like ______, ______, and ______.
5. Garden Park was the site of a feud between two famous paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and ______. 6. Besides dinosaurs, what other fossils have been found in Garden Park? ______
7. Give a reason why somebody might want to go visit Garden Park. ______
MARSH-FELCH PAGE Now, Go to the Marsh-Felch page. You will see that here is a history of Felch’s life, letters between Marsh and Felch, and an interactive dinosaur quarry map. First, read the history of Marshall Felch’s life carefully, which spans five pages. Then, answer the following questions. 8. Name two significant events that happened in Felch’s life before he moved to Canon City in 1871.
9. Was Felch’s family life charmed? Support your answer with examples.
10. How many years after the first fossil discovery did the paleontologist Othneil Marsh find out about it? Why do you think it took so long? 11. Did Marsh pay Felch a fair salary for removing the fossils and sending them back East? Support your answer with data.
12. What did Felch think of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad? How do you know?
13. Why do you think that Felch stopped writing to Marsh for two years near the end of their relationship?
MARSH-FELCH PAGE INTERACTIVE MAP Visit the interactive map and select various survey years to see when particular fossils were found. Then answer the following questions: 14. Did Felch excavate the fossils in an orderly or haphazard manner. Explain your answer. 15. In which years were the most fossils found?
16. In the letters of 1887, Marsh makes what unreasonable request of Felch?
17. What part of the Stegosaurus stenops was found?
18. What part of the Ceratosaurus nasicornis was found?
19. The tails of which dinosaurs have been found?
MARSH-FELCH LETTERS/CORRESPONDENCE Next, read through some of the letters between Felch and Marsh to get a first-hand account of the quarry. At the top of each letter is a summary written in bold type. Try reading some of the letters and seeing if you can figure out their intent despite the old-fashioned way of writing. Then, answer the following questions about particular letters. Year/ Letter Question: Answer: 1883/ Felch to Marsh How much does Felch say a good man will cost to hire per day? 1884 /Felch to Marsh Question: What does Felch say is happening to his tools on the frozen ground? What does he need? 1884/ Marsh to Felch Marsh was upset that what was thrown away? 1885/Felch to Marsh What anology does Felch use to explain how difficult it is to excavate the fossils? 1889/Felch to Marsh Who writes on behalf of Felch? Why? What does she say? 1891/ Marsh to Felch What does Marsh say about his competitor, Cope?
Next, Read about the Cope-Lucas Quarry history by clicking on the Cope-Lucas heading. 20. Lucas first discovered bones in what year? ______21. At the time he discovered the fossils, what was Lucas’s job? ______22. What was Lucas doing outside when he stumbled on the fossils? ______23. How did Cope hear about Lucas’s discovery? ______24. What evidence do we have that Lucas was knowledgeable about the fossils that he was finding?
25. Benjamin Mudge was initially working for Cope. Who did Mudge end up working for?
Next, click on the Quarries link in the Cope-Lucas Page. On the old- fashioned yellow map that shows up, click where it says CSI. This will take you to a picture of Saurian Hill. 26. What kind of bones do you see in this picture?
27. Next, go back to the yellow map and click on the Fort. What kind of bones do you see in this picture from 1879?
28. Next, go back to the yellow map and click on the Ridge. What does the illustration show?
Next, click on the Fossils link on the Cope-Lucas Page. Then, click on the information and vocabulary link, and look up the following terms. Write the definition of these terms. 29. Sauropod
30. Jurassic
31. Type locality
32. Type specimen
33. Vertebrae
34. Explain why Canon City is important using some of the vocabulary words from above. Next, go to the dinosaurs under the fossils link, and explore the site. Then, hunt down the following answers:
CAMPTOSAURUS Some scientists have proposed that Camptosaurus could run on its hind legs at speeds of up to ____ mph, or 25 km/h (Foster, 2007). A living Camptosaurus would have been about ___ feet long and weighed around ______lbs. Most ornithopods are thought to have traveled in herds, which would have protected them from predators like ______. (Carpenter, 1995)
CAMARASURUS Camarasaurus was a bulky sauropod with hollow ______in its vertebrae, prompting Edward Drinker Cope to give it the name “Chambered Lizard.” The first Camarasaurus ever found, a skeleton of Camarasaurus supremus, came from the Lucas quarries, and its bones were among the first fossils Oramel Lucas discovered. In life, Camarasaurus probably ate coarse plant material and traveled in family ______or herds. Its fore limbs were longer than its hind limbs, and each front foot had ______toes with a large claw on the innermost one. Camarasaurus supremus is the largest known species of Camarasaur, reaching a length of ____ feet (23 meters) and possibly weighing as much as 51.8 tons
APATASAURUS One of the most famous examples of dinosaur naming confusion is the “Brontosaurus,” also named by Marsh. Paleontologists have since determined “Brontosaurus excelsus” to really be a large ______, specifically A. excelsus. However, the name “Brontosaurus” was so widespread and so often mentioned in popular media that much of the public continued to use it long after it became an invalid name. Bones of A. excelsus were found in the Marsh-Felch Quarry in ______.
STEGOSAURUS Stegosaurus, the state fossil of Colorado, was a strange looking herbivore with an array of distinctive plates along its back and spikes on its tail. Its name, which means “______lizard,” comes from an early theory that Stegosaurus’s plates laid flat on its back, overlapping each other like ______on a roof. Today, most paleontologists think of Stegosaurus’s plates as sticking straight up out of the back in two alternating rows. The discovery of the world’s most complete Stegosaurus in ______supported this theory, as its plates appear to be in two alternating rows. AMPHICOELIAS Amphicoelias is a genus of giant sauropod that possibly includes the ______land animal ever found. While it was enormous, Amphicoelias was also very slender, its build slighter than that of the bulkier and much more common Camarasaurus. Amphicoelias was an ______, though it probably didn’t eat as coarse of material as Camarasaurus did. Currently (2016), there is a vertebrae replica from Amphicoelias on display at the Quality Inn motel! Go check it out if you can! Amphicoelias fragillimus is only known from one enormous fragmented vertebra (about 4.9 feet, or 1.5 meters tall) (Cope, 1878), of which have been ______. If complete, the vertebra would probably have been well over 8 feet tall (2.7 meters). Carpenter (2006) estimated the length of A. fragillimus at ______feet long (about 58 meters), which is within the range suggested by Paul (1994) of 40-60 meters or 131-196 feet . Even conservative estimates of 130 feet (40 meters) would still make A. fragilimus by far the ______animal ever found.
MATCHING GAME Next, go to the Activities page on the Cope-Lucas page, and select the matching game. Match the dinosaurs to their names. When you can do it without mistakes, show the teacher. (teachers initials______)
DEWEESE Next, Go to the DeWeese Page and read the history. 35. What part of Canon City did DeWeese set up his fruit tree orchards and irrigation system? ______36. In the “I’ve gone hunting” poster, what is Dall DeWeese posing with? ______37. What did DeWeese like to do in his spare time? 38. What was he doing when he discovered the Diplodocus fossils?
39. How did DeWeese finance the expensive excavation of the fossil Diplodocus dinosaur?
40. As part of the deal, did DeWeese get to keep the dinosaur fossil?
41. What will Dall DeWeese be most remembered for?
KESSLER Next, go to the Kessler page and read about history. 42. Did Kessler love ranching? How do you know?
43. What was the first dinosaur Kessler found? What happened to it? 44. What was the second (and more important) dinosaur that Kessler found?
45. How did this fossil end up becoming the state fossil?
CLEVELAND-DELFS QUARRY 46. Who started the Cleveland-Delfs Quarry?
47. What dinosaur was found there?
48. What besides dinosaurs was found there?
49. How are the non-dinosaur fossils important?
SMALL QUARRY 50. Who found the dinosaur in the small quarry? 51. What kind of dinosaur was it?
52. What tools were used in the excavation?
53. If you were hiring a person to help you excavate fossils out of hard rock, and the work was very difficult, what qualities in a person might you look for?
54. What was so exciting about the tail of this dinosaur?
55. How was this fossil removed from Garden Park?
56. Is there a replica of this fossil in Canon City?
57. How was this find relevant to the Colorado state fossil?