Re: Ye Olde Duckbill Dinosaur

[franczak@ntplx.net (Brian Franczak)]

George Olshevsky wrote:

> When it came time to revamp the American Museum's dinosaur displays earlier
> in this decade, the mount of Cope's skeleton (one of two at the museum,
> incidentally, positioned side by side in the Cretaceous hall) was finally
> relabelled from "trachodont dinosaur" to _Anatotitan copei_, which it is my
> guess it will stay for quite some time.

It's too bad that the AMNH didn't remount the skeletons when they renamed
them. _Anatotitan copei_ is a honkin' big hadrosaur, and to see the pair of
them correctly mounted would have been a truly awesome sight. Leaving the
old mount (with Knight's admittedly beautiful but inaccurate painting
beside them) does nothing to impart any information about what we now think
about hadrosaur anatomy. In arguably the greatest science museum in the
world, with the greatest collection of dinosaur specimens, I found this
quite disappointing.

Brian Franczak (franczak@ntplx.net)