The story started in June of 1992, when Ken Carpenter was having his annual field excursion with volunteers from the Denver Museum of Natural History (now known as the Denver Museum of Nature and Science) in Garden Park near Cañon City, CO. Bryan Small, Ken’s assistant, was searching for fossils with several museum volunteers when he came upon a chance discovery. While searching for microvertebrate fossils, Bryan scraped his rock hammer against a mudstone outcrop of the Morrison Formation and something unusual was knocked lose. To his surprise it turned out to be the fossilized vertebra of a Stegosaurus stenops and after digging a little bit more, they realized that there were more bones buried there.
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