Additional Information

Letters and other Historical Documents

I.H. Lucas to E.D. Cope, October 13, 1883

I.H. Lucas to E.D. Cope, January 17, 1884

O.W. Lucas to F.V. Hayden, November 18, 1878 - O.W. Lucas asks Hayden, head of one of the four major geological surveys active in the United States at the time, for reports on Western vertebrate fossils. Lucas talks of work on a second Camarasaurus supremus skeleton and mentions Cope's report on the enormous vertebra of Amphicoelias fragilimus. He also talks of spending the winter in Oberlin, Ohio.

Hayden's geological survey had produced numerous publications, including seven volumes on paleontology, five of which had been writen by Cope. At the time this letter was written, most likely unbeknownst to Lucas, a campaign had just begun to merge the four main surveys into a single United States Geological Survey. This was a major power struggle that ended with paleontologist O.C. Marsh ahead of Cope and Hayden.

H.F. Osborn to O.W. Lucas, April 30, 1904 - Osborn, a former mentee and long-time friend of Cope, requests information from O.W. Lucas about the Garden Park quarries. At this point Osborn was working for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and Cope had been dead for several years. Osborn ended up publishing a manuscript on the sauropods of the Cope-Lucas Quarries in 1921, still lacking sufficient quarry records.

Osborn mentions obtaining Lucas's address from J.B. Hatcher, a former employee of Marsh. Hatcher had been searching for bones in Garden Park (now for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh) between 1900 and 1901, during which time he probably ran into the Lucas Family. Hatcher died mere months after this letter was written.

Letter from Cope Describing Cañon City

E.D. Cope to A.P. Cope, July 28, 1879 - Cope writes to his wife, Annie Cope, describing his visit to Cañon City and Oramel Lucas. "Julia" refers to his and Annie's daughter.

Letters from Felch Mentioning the Lucases

M.P. Felch to O.C. Marsh, April 22, 1882 - Felch mentions prospecting for bones near the Lucases' claim.

Sherburne Letters

The Sherburnes were family friends of the Lucases in Pittsfield, Ohio, before the Lucas family moved to Colorado. The following letters date from the Civil War, and refer to Ira Lucas's work in a Union Army hospital. These letters were obtained from the Sherburne Family History website and are used with permission.

A.W. Lucas to C. Sherburne, 1864

I.H. Lucas to S. Sherburne, 1864

I.H. Lucas to S. Sherburne, 1865

I.H. Lucas to S. Sherburne, 1865

I.H. Lucas to S. Sherburne, 1865


The following is a collection of documents relevant to the Cope Lucas Quarries and the Lucas family:

O.W. Lucas, Digging Dinosaur Bones in Colorado - Oramel's account of the beginnings of the Cope-Lucas quarries, as dictated to his daughter Ethel Eudora near the end of his life.

Cañon City Avalanche, June 14, 1877 - Original article describing O.W. Lucas's find

Cañon City Avalanche, June 21, 1877 - Article written by O.W. Lucas in response to the article above

Cope's permission to collect at Garden Park

Cope's field notebook entries describing Cañon City

Cope's personal ledger referring to Cañon City

O.W. Lucas's address to his Oberlin classmates' reunion

O.W. Lucas's obituary


Articles and Books

Carpenter, K., 1995, The Dinosaurs of Marsh and Cope: Cañon City, Colorado, Garden Park Paleontology Society, p. 22.

Carpenter, K., 1998, Armor of Stegosaurus stenops, and the taphonomic history of a new specimen from Garden Park Colorado in The Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation: An Interdisciplinary Study, Part 1: Modern Geology, no. 22, p. 127-144.

Carpenter, K., 2006, Biggest of the big: a critical re-evaluation of the mega-sauropod Amphicoelias fragillimus, in Foster, J.R., and Lucas, S.G., eds., Paleontology and Geology of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation: New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin, no. 36, p. 131–138.

Chure, D. J., 2001, On the type and referred material of Laelaps trihedrodon Cope 1877 in Tanke, D., and Carpenter, K., eds., Mesozoic vertebrate life: Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, p. 10–18.

Cope, E. D., 1878, A new opisthocoelous dinosaur: American Naturalist, v. 12, no. 6, p. 406.

Cope, E. D., 1878, A new species of Amphicoelias: American Naturalist, v. 12, no. 8, p. 563-564.

Foster, J., 2007, Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World: Bloomington, Indiana University Press, p. 389.

Gaffney, E. S., 1979, The Jurassic Turtles of North America: Bulleton of the American Museum of Natural History 152, no. 3, p. 91–136.

Hupps, K. M., Lockley, M. G., Foster, J. R., 2006, A partial skeleton of Goniopholis from the Brush Basin Member of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Cactus Park, Colorado, and distributions of large neosuchians in Foster, J. R. and Lucas, S. G., eds., 2006, Paleontology and Geology of the Upper Morrison Formation: New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin, no. 36, p. 107-108.

Jaffe, M., 2000, The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War Between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science: New York, Three Rivers Press, 424 p.

Marsh, O. C., 1896, The Dinosaurs of North America: U. S. Geological Survey: Sixteenth Annual Report, 1894-1895, p. 133-414.

McIntosh, J. S., 1998, New information about the Cope collection of sauropods from Garden Park, Colorado: Modern Geology, v. 23, p. 481-506.

Mook, C. C., 1942, Skull characters of Amphicotyles lucasii Cope: American Museum Novitates, no. 1165, p. 5.

Osborn, H. F., and Mook, C. C., 1919, Characters and Restoration of the sauropod genus Camarasaurus Cope from type material in the Cope Collection in the American Museum of Natural History: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, v. 58, no. 6, p. 386-396.

Osborn, H. F., and Mook, C. C., 1921, Camarasaurus, Amphicoelias, and other sauropods of Cope: Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, New Series, v. 3, Part 3, p. 247-387.

Paul, G. S., 1988, Genus Allosaurus in Predatory Dinosaurs of the World: New York, Simon and Schuster, p. 307–313.

Paul, G. S., 1994, Big sauropods - really, really big sauropods: The Dinosaur Report, The Dinosaur Society, Fall, p. 12-13.