Ferdinand Hayden was 10 years old when his alcoholic father died. Shortly after, his mother sent him away from his Massachusetts home to live with an aunt in Ohio. He grew up in a troubled home, but perhaps his parents had a vision for what their son could be by naming him Ferdinand—the name of one of history’s greatest explorers: Ferdinand Magellan.
Whether there was any positive intent on the part of Asa and Melinda Hayden for their son, he nonetheless became one of the great American explorers of the 19th century. He is best known as a geologist and for leading the 1871 Geological Survey (also known as the Hayden Expedition) into what became America’s first national park, Yellowstone.
Before his venture into Yellowstone, Hayden joined geologist Fielding B. Meek in 1853 for an expedition up the Missouri River and into South Dakota’s Badlands. The expedition extended into the following year as the two journeyed to today’s central Montana where the Missouri and Judith rivers connected. Here, Hayden is credited with making the first discovery of dinosaur remains in American history.
About 50 years prior, however, during the Lewis and Clark Expedition, William Clark made notes of an exposed rib in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, which some paleontologists suggest was the first documented discovery of a dinosaur fossil.
American Paleontology
From the moment of Hayden’s discovery, the America’s field of paleontology began to grow. Discoveries were not made solely in Montana. The states of Wyoming, Colorado, and the Dakotas have proven to be fertile ground for dinosaur fossils, and many paleontologists have cut their teeth by digging up great finds there. In 1877, a railroad worker named William Harlow Reed made an chance discovery of a vast array of dinosaur bones in Como, Wyoming.
Upon this discovery, Reed contacted one of the most prominent paleontologists in the country, Othniel Marsh. Marsh was professor of paleontology at Yale College. For six years, the two worked together, with Reed sending his findings to Marsh.
Andrew Carnegie and Barnum Brown
Toward the latter end of the 19th century, the paleontological bug had bitten one of the country’s most prominent men: Andrew Carnegie. By 1895, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History had opened. Carnegie wanted in on the fossil finds. When a New York Journal reporter interviewed Reed in 1898 about his discovery of a Brontosaurus giganteus, Carnegie sent his museum director to Wyoming to hire Reed.
Leading the Carnegie expedition, Reed made a historic discovery in July 1899, only 30 miles from his Brontosaurus find. Reed found a toe bone. He immediately directed his excavation team to the area. After the dig was completed, a nearly intact skeleton of a Diplodocus lay before the team. Reed named the dinosaur Diplodocus carnegii.
The greatest dinosaur discovery, however, was yet to be made. A young fossil hunter by the name of Barnum Brown was quickly rising through the ranks of paleontologists. Although he was not an official paleontologist — college wasn’t a good fit for him — he had a nose for finding dinosaur bones.
‘Never Seen Anything Like It’
Fifty years after Hayden’s discovery, Brown began an expedition into Hell Creek in 1902—about 100 years after Clark’s dig. Brown’s first discovery was a Triceratops that he noted would be “a fine exhibition specimen.” His team continued to excavate under the hot summer sun. His next find would nearly leave him speechless.
Sue’s Really Big Find
The first discovery that Sue Hendrickson made was of a brass perfume bottle. She found it as a little girl, and she kept it ever since. Forty-one years after Brown’s second Tyrannosaurus rex discovery, Hendrickson grew up in Munster, Indiana, near Chicago. Exploration was what she found most fascinating, and she decided to drop out of high school to pursue it as a career. She became a diver in the Dominican Republic. In the mid-1980s, she joined the Black Hills Institute in Peru to excavate whales. Starting in the late 1980s, she joined the Institute in South Dakota for fossil excavation.During the summer of 1990, the team had been digging for fossils near Faith, South Dakota, as part of their annual Ruth Mason Dinosaur Digs. Hendrickson had been hoping for something big — really big. As the two-month project neared its end, opportunity struck, but in a roundabout way. The tire on the team’s truck had gone flat. Hendrickson stayed behind at the camp with her dog, Gypsy, while the rest went into town to get a new tire.
The Black Hills Institute team had been scheduled to leave the next day. They would remain another 17. It was during this week in history, on Aug. 12, 1990, that Hendrickson discovered the largest and most intact—about 90 percent—Tyrannosaurus rex to date. The fully intact skull weighed approximately 600 pounds. The dinosaur was 40 feet long and 13 feet tall at the hip. This 67-million-year-old fossil from the Cretaceous Period was named after its discoverer: SUE.
