Dinosaur Graveyard

The panel's digging ends with the Yale and Philadelphia crews, but a second rush came here. In 1897 Walter Granger of the American Museum of Natural History found a hillside of bone fragments near the bluff, beside a sheepherder's cabin built of fossil bones. The Museum worked Bone Cabin Quarry from 1898 to 1905 and opened Nine Mile Quarry, five miles away, in 1899, and its Wyoming sauropods went into the Brontosaurus it mounted in New York in 1905. Thomas Boylan's Fossil Cabin of 1932 was the second bone cabin, not the first.

What the plaque says

Dinosaur Graveyard To the north lies Como Bluff-"The Dinosaur Graveyard"- one of the greatest and well known fossil beds of dinosaur remains in the world. There paleontologists of the 19th century discovered and unearthed many excellent fossil specimens of the world's largest land creatures. Crews working for paleontologists at Yale University and the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences found a multitude of dinosaur and other prehistoric animal remains in the late 1870s and 1880s, making Como Bluff the site of one of the most important discoveries of Jurassic fossils in the world. Dinosaur fossils from this region, including the now familiar Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, and Apatosaurus (aka. Brontosaurus), did more than any other discoveries to make the public conscious of dinosaurs. Fierce competition ensued between paleontologists and academic institutions resulting in what is now known as the "Dinosaur Wars." In the late 1800s, hundreds of bones of dinosaurs and many other Jurassic animals, including some of the earliest known mammals were unearthed and shipped from this area. They now reside in such institutions as the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and the American Museum of Natural History. Fossil Cabin was constructed as a tourist attraction during the Lincoln Highway era. Como Bluff and Fossil Cabin are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Como Bluff is primarily on private land. Trespassing is not allowed.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Albany County Train Robberies — steps away
• Owen Wister — 6.9 mi
• Fort Halleck - Fort Laramie Road — 8.5 mi
• Old Rock Creek Stage Crossing — 20 mi