Here's Where It Gets Interesting - New Jersey’s Dinosaur: The Hadrosaurus foulkii

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

In this episode, Sharon shares the fascinating story behind New Jersey’s Hadrosaurus foulkii, the first full dinosaur skeleton to be discovered anywhere in the world. The skeleton was unearthed in 1858 when naturalist William Parker Foulke was vacationing in Haddonfield, New Jersey. At the time, very few people had heard the term “dinosaur” but Foulke and his comrade, paleontologist Joseph Leidy, spent the next few years uncovering, researching, and sharing the two-story tall “Bulky Lizard” with museum crowds of visitors who were in awe of the prehistoric creature. And here we are, still fascinated with dinosaurs today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. So happy you are joining me today. And I have a really fun story for you from the fantastic state of New Jersey. You can probably guess if you're keeping track what comes next alphabetically. But you know I love science and you know I love history. And this story marries both of those things. So I'm really into it. And let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. One of the things that consistently cracks me up, and I mean that literally, I sometimes will think about this and chuckle, is that the people who wrote the Constitution, the people who formed a government out of nothing, who risked everything to travel across the Atlantic Ocean, make a country where they had freedom of religion,

those people had no idea that dinosaurs existed. That just cracks me up. Cracks me up that they had no idea that dinosaurs existed. Like that was a thing that had yet to be discovered. We really did not know as like a human race that dinosaurs existed until the mid 1800s. All of that time went on by until the mid-1800s when people started digging. They started digging stuff up and they're like, what in the Sam Hill is this now? I'm certain that throughout the thousands of years of recorded human history, people had dug up dinosaur bones before, but they had never been able to identify what they were. They were just like, dang, that is a large bone. But let's dive into the story about the very first dinosaur put on display, which was discovered in New Jersey. All right, are you ready? So in 1842, the first sort of real dinosaur

skeletons were unearthed in England. They were found by Sir Richard Owen, who was the founder of the Natural History Museum in London, and he started looking for fossils. He was on the hunt, and he found some in southern England in the early 1800s. And he sort of had this aha moment where he was like, interesting, interesting. These fossils have many similarities. And he began to hypothesize that these were not some like woolly mammoth type situation where they were mammals, that these were lizards. And he coined the phrase dinosaur, which means terrible lizard. And in this context, terrible means like massive or great or huge. And this touched off this kind of frenzy of like, did you know there were massive lizards that used to roam the earth? You know, like humans had their little sort of mind-blown moments about the idea

that massive lizards once roamed the earth. We had all of these sort of hints throughout time. People would unearth a massive bone. We'd see a fossilized footprint, but they never really knew what to make of them. There was a time in the 1850s when a geologist, Ferdinand Vanderveer Hayden, he uncovered some fossilized teeth in what is now Montana. And again, scientists were like, I'm not sure. It's obviously not anything we know about. I'm not sure what it is. So I want to introduce you to an important character in this story. His name is Joseph Leidy, spelled L-E-I-D-Y. In the mid 1800s, Joseph Leidy is a well-educated, intelligent man who becomes sort of a gentleman naturalist. That was who could afford to study things like this at that time

period. Men with curiosity, men with intellect, men of means. Much of our discoveries surrounding the natural world during this time period were bound by these sort of category of gentlemen naturalists. I'm going to introduce you to another character. His name is William Folk. And he was born in Philadelphia. He was a lawyer. He was, you know, really into things like history, geology, philanthropy. In fact, William Falk was somebody who promoted the expedition surrounding Arctic explorations. One evening, William Falk is having dinner on a summer holiday in the 1850s. He's having dinner in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and he's having dinner with this gentleman named John Hopkins. John Hopkins begins telling him this story that happened to him like 20 years prior. He's like, you know, I was digging, I was digging

up some stuff on my farm, and I was digging up some marl, M-A-R-L, marl. And that's kind of this soil that's mixed with stones. It's like this very dense clay. And so he's engaged in this building project. He's digging up things in the marl pits on his farm. And he's like, and then I came across some really, really, really big bones. And William Folk was like, interesting. That is interesting. And Folk was like, can you show any of them to me? And turns out that John Hopkins had dug up these bones and had given some of them to neighbors. And the neighbors were like, sure, I'll use that as a doorstop. Sure, I'll put that on my porch. It'll be a decoration. It's fine. So Falk reaches out to Joseph Leidy, who I mentioned earlier. Joseph Leidy was a fellow

at the Academy of Natural Sciences at that time. He was really a founding member of this emerging science of paleontology. And he was one of those people who had this special kind of genius, Joseph Leidy did, where he could just look at a small bone and be like, that is a knee of a frog. And then tell you like, what kind of frog it was. Like, you know what I'm talking about? Those people who just have a knack for being able to identify things. And Joseph Leidy was one of those people. So William Folk calls up Joseph Leidy and he's like, listen, I'm out here in New Jersey across the river and I'm having dinner with my buddy. And my buddy is telling me all about this place on his farm where he started digging up

giant bones. And I thought you might be interested in that. So out comes Joseph Lighty, out comes William Folk. They go to the farm of John Hopkins. They start digging. The first day, they're coming up with nothing. Eventually, John Hopkins is like, you know what? That is the wrong place. That is not where I dug it up. It's over here. So on the second day of digging, the workmen go over to the original dig location. And about 10 feet down, they started uncovering massive black dinosaur bones. And it turned out to be the left side of a dinosaur skeleton, like part of a hip, the forelegs and the hind legs, 28 vertebrae and nine teeth. And I can only imagine how these people felt when they realized that they were uncovering a dinosaur. Because remember, the dinosaur craze had just recently been getting going. Like people only recently learned that

dinosaurs were even a thing. And then to uncover one in their backyards in New Jersey had to be incredibly exciting. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from The Office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office

Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. They did not find a skull. And perhaps portions of the skull were given to the neighbors. We don't know. Perhaps portions of the skull were like to the neighbors. We don't know. Perhaps portions of the skull were

like on people's porches. Portions of the story do talk about how Joseph Lighty and William Folk went around to all the different neighbors and were like, do you have any of these bones? And part of the tale, I don't know if this part is true, is that some of the neighbors still had portions of the skeleton and gave it back to them. Folk and Leidy carefully extract the bones. They sketch them. They measure them. They place them on boards. They wrap them in cloths.

And they transport them in a cart filled with straw so that they're very, very careful. They were extraordinarily cautious about making sure that they kept as much intact as possible. They begin to do more research, particularly Joseph Leidy, who was the expert in paleontology, and eventually decides, because he discovered it, essentially, he's the scientist who discovered it, he gets to name it. And so he decided he was going to name this dinosaur Hadrosaurus fulci. All right. So sorus we know means, you know, dinosaur is related to being a dinosaur. Hadro was in part related to Haddonfield, New Jersey, where this was discovered. And Fulci is related to William Fulke, who led him to the dig location. So he named this dinosaur after William Fulke. And Hadrosaurus Fulci was the

first dinosaur species to be identified and known from more than just teeth in the entirety of North America. And it was the first full skeleton of a dinosaur found anywhere in the world. So Leidy knows that he cannot just keep these dinosaur bones under wraps, that they need to be displayed because this was going to be something that the public was tremendously interested in. These are a couple of Joseph Leidy's writings surrounding Hadrosaurus vulci. These osseous remains upon which the genus Hadrosaurus had been founded indicate a reptile of equally huge proportions and of the same habits of life as the great Iguanodon. And Iguanodon was one of the species that had been identified in England during this time period.

Another important thing that came from the discovery of Hadrosaurus foci, which they nicknamed Had, was it demonstrated that dinosaurs could walk on two legs, that they could be bipedal. Up until this point, dinosaurs were just thought to be like giant lizards that walked on four legs or they swam with four legs. And Hadrosaurus, they knew, walked upright, at least some of the time, in part because it had very, very short forearms. You know how Tyrannosaurus Rex is like little teeny arms? Hadrosaurus is not quite that exaggerated, but for it to even be able to walk on four legs, it would have been a very, very uncomfortable situation. So they knew that Hadrosaurus walked mostly on its back legs,

and that it perhaps used that type of locomotion to eat things higher off of trees, etc. Some scientists now think that Hadrosaurus mostly walked on four legs, but could walk on two legs. It is true, though, that Hadrosaurus foci is the only type of Hadrosaurus of its kind. We've never identified another kind just like it yet. It was, by the way, approximately 26 feet tall. So think about how big that is. That is the size of a two-story house. Okay, we're not talking about a mini dinosaur here. This is a very large dinosaur. This is another thing that Leidy said about it. The great disproportion of the size between the fore and back parts of the skeleton of Hadrosaurus lead me to suspect that this giant extinct herbivorous lizard may have been in the habit of browsing kangaroo-like in an erect position on its back extremities and tail. So basically standing on its back legs to be able

to browse or eat things out of trees, kind of like a giraffe browses out of the trees. Isn't that interesting? So in 1868, Hadrosaurus vulcii became the first dinosaur skeleton in the world to be mounted for display. And I mentioned before that they did not have the skull of this dinosaur. So they found this man whose name was Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. And Hawkins had been very instrumental in helping to mount and sculpt portions of other dinosaurs that had been discovered in England. He was very, very keen on mounting and displaying an entire dinosaur skeleton. And so he helped with the mounting and it was him that helped sculpt what was a close approximation of what Hadrosaurus vulcae's skull would have looked like. Eventually

now we know that Hawkins's sculpted head is not quite what it would have looked like, but it was a guess because they had never, they didn't have any others to go on. So Leithy had hoped initially that the display that was just going to be, you know, educational, that people are going to be like, that is neat. And it was going to foster an interest in natural history. And it exploded far bigger than Leithy could have ever hoped. In a normal year, about 30,000 people would visit the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Once Had went on display, the attendance at the museum doubled. The year after that, the attendance went from 60,000 to 100,000. And eventually the Academy had to build a new building to accommodate all of the crowds of people who wanted to see this dinosaur skeleton. And by the end of the 1800s,

dinosaurs had become very well known. More public curiosity. I mean, think about how many small children are interested in dinosaurs now, right? Like including my child, interested in dinosaurs. Imagine dinosaurs being a new discovery and how exciting that had to be, not just for children, but for adults. So they began discovering more dinosaurs throughout the United States and around the world. In the 1870s, they uncovered a stegosaurus. In the 1880s, they uncovered a triceratops. Eventually, zooming ahead to the 1990s, the state of New Jersey made Hadrosaurus vulcae the official state dinosaur of New Jersey, and deservedly so. I do not know any other state dinosaurs. I would need to look that up,

but I think that's cute. That hat is the official state dinosaur of New Jersey. Because this was such a unique skeleton, it was not being permanently displayed at the Academy of Natural Sciences. And it was sort of in their collection, but not being displayed. And so in like 2008, And it was sort of in their collection, but not being displayed. And so in like 2008, 2009, they made a cast of it so that they could display the full skeleton. You can now go to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and see an exact replica of the Hadrosaurus fulci that was discovered by John Hopkins, William Fulk, Joseph Leidy, uncovered in somebody's backyard of a farm.

All right, I want to tell you a little bit more about Joseph Leidy because this is one of those people from history that you probably haven't heard of unless you're very into paleontology. And he's just an interesting, interesting man. He published over 800 works, scholarly articles, books, et cetera. 800. Interestingly enough, Joseph Leidy in 1846 was the person who identified what it is in uncooked pork that can make people sick. You know what I'm talking about when people get trichinosis from eating uncooked pork? It was Joseph Leidy that identified that and began the recommendation of you need to cook pork well enough to kill what is in it that is making you sick. I just thought that was funny that like, oh, food safety as well as paleontology. That's funny. Also, Joseph Lighty, before he helped discover Hadrosaurus, was the first person in history

to ever use a microscope to solve a murder. There was a man in the 1840s who was accused of killing a Philadelphia farmer. He had blood all over his hands, blood all over his clothes, all over his hatchet. And the man was like, it couldn't have been me. All of this blood is from chickens that I've been slaughtering. This is chicken blood. So using his microscope, Joseph Lighty was able to compare chicken blood to human blood and determine that the blood on the gentleman's hatchets and clothing could not be chicken blood, that it had to be human blood. Consequently, the person who had done the killing confessed when they presented him with the evidence of there's no way this could be chicken blood. He confessed. Justice was served because of gentleman naturalist Joseph Leidy. He is a very interesting man. So if you're like, I need a deep dive. I need to look up some

interesting people from history. I like science. You would probably like him. Isn't that interesting that the hadrosaurus bones were just like on people's porches? And that the man who was a founder of paleontology also identified the organism that causes trichinosis in pork and he solved a murder. I mean, like, if you put all these things in a movie, people would be like, this movie makes no sense. This movie makes no sense. What is the plot of this movie? But yet it's real life. And as they say, truth is often stranger than fiction. So I thought you would enjoy that. I thought you'd enjoy learning more about the very first dinosaur skeleton ever uncovered in its entirety or almost its entirety and put on display, discovered in Haddonfield, New Jersey. So there you go. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. I cannot wait to have another mind-blown moment with you next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.