Large fossil on display in Royal Gorge Field Office
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CANON CITY, Colo. – The Bureau of Land Management Royal Gorge Field Office has a large guest in the lobby. A 9' replica of the vertebra from Amphicoelias fragillimus is on display in the field office.
In 1877, Ormel Lucas excavated Amphicoelias fragillimus, a Jurassic sauropod dinosaur, 8 miles north of Canon City in Garden Park while working for Professor E.D. Cope of Philadelphia. Believed to be the largest animal to walk the face of the Earth, Amphicoelias probably weighed 135 tons, was 190' long and was nearly twice the size of any other known dinosaur, reaching 30' high at its back.
The display is based on a partial vertebra that has since been lost (probably due to its fragile nature when excavated, hence its name). Paleontologist Ken Carpenter, formerly of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, constructed the replica based on data from Cope's original measurements.
The Marsh-Felch, Cleveland-Delfs and Cope quarries played an important role in Fremont County’s history. Canon City became a hotspot for paleontology beginning in the 1870s when prominent U.S. paleontologists Othniel C. Marsh and Edward D. Cope quarried the first fossilized bones of many dinosaur species in the Garden Park Fossil Area. Since their famous “Bone Wars,” during which the scientists raced to discover and name new dinosaur species, many other paleontology digs in Garden Park have provided the scientific world with irreplaceable information about the anatomy of Jurassic-aged dinosaurs and the types of environments they lived and died in.
In April 2013, the Garden Park Fossil Area’s National Natural Landmark was expanded from a 40-acre designation to 3,208 acres by the National Park Service and the BLM.
The stories behind the excavations at these quarries will be told at the NNL designation celebration on Oct. 9 at the Cleveland Quarry rest area off Garden Park Road starting at 10 a.m. In the meantime, be sure to stop by the Royal Gorge Field Office to see the vertebra from Amphicoelias.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land located primarily in 12 western states, including Alaska, on behalf of the American people. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. Our mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of America’s public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.