Earliest History of Vertebrate Paleontology in Utah: Last Half of the 19th Century

Aside from the recorded travels of Juan de Rivera in 1765 and the Dominguez-Escalante party in 1776, the earliest reports involving explorations into Utah were mostly those for proposed railroad lines and trade routes, or for general knowledge of the poorly known Western Territories (1840s to 1870s). These explorations were usually conducted under the auspices of the United States Army. Scientists, including geologists/paleontologists, commonly accompanied the survey parties. The first surveys whose prime objectives were to study geology and topography were commissioned by Congress in 1867.

The earliest discovery of a vertebrate fossil in Utah apparently took place on the J. N. Macomb expedition of 1859 (which generally followed the Old Spanish Trail), when J. S. Newberry collected dinosaur bones in the southeastern part of the state. F. V. Hayden's 1870 survey may have extended into northernmost Utah. It is possible that a few of the Eocene age fossils which were reported by him from southernmost Wyoming, came from here. Fossils collected during the Hayden survey prompted a vertebrate fossil collecting trip headed by J. Leidy into the same area two years later. Also in 1870, O. C. Marsh discovered and named the Uinta Basin, making a significant fossil vertebrate collection there. Numerous Eocene mammals as well as reptiles and fish were collected in the Basin proper, while a turtle shell and dinosaur teeth were recovered from the upturned Mesozoic beds on the eastern rim of the Uinta Basin. A Jurassic crocodile humerus was found by Marsh along the eastern flank of the Uinta Mountains. In subsequent years before the turn of the century several institutions sent paleontological parties into this area. E. D. Cope in 1880 identified fossil fish and a crocodile from Eocene deposits of central Utah. Pleistocene mammals were first reported by P. A. Chadbourne (1871) and C. King (1878) from Salt Lake and Utah valleys.

While early expeditions for vertebrate fossils concentrated largely on adjacent states, many of America's prominent 19th Century vertebrate paleontologists collected fossils in Utah. Their work pioneered the way for present-day paleontologists.