Zoehfeld Kathleen Weidner - Finding the First T. Rex

S ixty-seven million years ago, two giant meat-eaters battled. They shoved each other with their big, knobby heads. They opened their horrible jaws. And they snapped their saw-edged teeth. Their thumps, chomps, and grunts rang through the steamy swamp where they lived.

Finally one of the monsters fell to the ground. His wounds were bad. After a few minutes, he died.

This was nothing new. Fights like this one had gone on every day for millions of years. And they would happen day after day for millions of years to come.

Animals are born and animals die. Most of the time, they leave no record of their lives. But this dead giant was lucky. Soon after his death, a nearby river flooded. It covered his bones with a thick blanket of sand. Safe under the sand, his bones became fossils. They lay undergroundwaiting.

I n 1876, America celebrated its one hundredth birthday. The Civil War was over. And the country was growing. The wild land where dinosaurs once battled had changed. The steamy swamps were long gone. Now everything was dry. Instead of dinosaurs, wolves and bison lived there. The area was known as the Montana Territory. Pioneers were moving west. They were building new homes and ranches.

Back east, big buildings were going up everywhere. On June 2, 1874, the president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, made a special trip to New York City. On that day, he laid the first stone for a new museum. It would become the American Museum of Natural History.

Two years later, the museum was almost done. Across the street, Central Park had just opened. People came to enjoy the new park. While they were there, they could watch the museum taking shape.

The six-story brownstone building with arched windows stood in the middle of a large, empty lot. Uptown was still pretty rustic at that time. Goats frisked on the grounds. They drank from the muddy puddles and grazed on the weeds.

Finally, on December 22, 1877, the last of the stray goats had been rounded up, and everything was ready for opening day. A crowd of excited New Yorkers waited for a tour of their new museum. Once inside they were in for a treat.

The museum was brimming with weird and wonderful things! It had the bones of an extinct dodo. A mastodon tooth. A camel from Armenia. Wild buffalo from the forests of Lithuania. A moose from Nova Scotia. A wapiti from the Rocky Mountains. And dozens of stuffed rats and mice.

Each item was carefully labeled. Smaller items were locked in glass cases. People stared in awe at 3,000 colorful birds, 4,000 beetles, 4,000 seashells, sixteen types of algae, and thousands of fossil clams and snails.

But this was only the beginning. The museums founder, Albert Bickmore, saw a great future for the museum. He planned to make the collections even bigger. He wanted to add new wings to the building. Before long, the American Museum of Natural History would be the biggest and best natural history museum in the world. Millions of people would come to New York just to see it.

New Yorkers were proud of the new museum. But after the first few weeks, they began to get bored. After a few months, hardly anyone visited. Day after day, Bickmore and his staff paced the lonely halls. Money was running out.

By 1880, the museums directors were very worried. One of them, Morris Jesup, was a self-made millionaire. The directors asked him to be president of the museum. He was good with money. Maybe he could help.

Jesup studied the problem. To him, it seemed hopeless. Not enough people were interested in the museums collections. It was as simple as that. He said the museum had to close.

But Bickmore wouldnt let go of his dream. He walked through the museum with Jesup. He pointed out each clam and snail. And he explained how rare and important they were. These fossils could help scientists tell the age of the earth itself. They could help unlock the secrets of how life evolved.

When he was a kid, Jesup liked school. But he had to quit after sixth grade. His father died. And at the age of twelve, Jesup had to work to support his family.

Nowright there in the museumhe was getting the education he had always wanted. It was even more interesting than he had imagined. He changed his mind about the museum. No matter what it cost, it must stay open. The people of New York needed this place. He just had to get them as excited about it as he was.

Instead of closing, he told the directors the museum had to grow even bigger. They asked how the museum would pay for more treasures. And where would they keep them all? Jesup told them not to worry. Hed figure it out.

For the next ten years, Jesup helped every part of the museum grow. Just as Bickmore dreamed, new wings were added. But where were the crowds? People were still not flocking to the great museum.

Jesup noticed that crowds were flocking to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Why? Because they had a big dinosaur skeleton from New Jersey!

The first dinosaur displays went up in England in the 1820s. Since then, people had gone dinosaur-crazy. In America, the famous bone hunters Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh were making headlines in all the big newspapers. The two men found many huge dinosaur skeletons in Colorado and Wyoming. They shipped the bones back east. People couldnt wait to get a look at them.

The American Museum of Natural History didnt have any dinosaurs. Jesup dreamed of putting up a huge dinosaur skeleton in his museum. Then the crowds would come! Once people were there, they would see how great the whole collection wassnails, clams, dinosaurs, and all!

I n 1891, Jesup hired Henry Fairfield Osborn, a tall, handsome professor from Princeton University. His job would be to find fossil bones for the museum. Jesup didnt ask Osborn to look for dinosaurs right away. He knew the young man was more interested in fossil mammals.

While Osborn was collecting mammals, another museum opened. This one was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The founder was a millionaire named Andrew Carnegie. He wanted his museum to be bigger and more important than the American Museum of Natural History. Suddenly Osborn had a rival.

So far, the American Museum of Natural History had only two big mammal skeletons on display. One was a mastodon. The other was a giant Irish elk.