Re: "O." grandis (was Re: Paranychodon questions)

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

At 06:08 AM 3/19/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. wrote:
>
>> (Sadly, the type material of "O." grandis is lost, so that we can't compare
>> it directly with other tyrannosaurid genera).

>So, does "lost" mean "destroyed," like the original _Spinosaurus_ material that
>was destroyed in bombing attacks in WWII?  Does it mean "missing, whereabouts
>unknown," like the originals of Peking Man from Zhoukoudian cave?  Or does it
>mean "somewhere in X collection, exactly where nobody knows?"

"Lost" means "cannot be found": we don't know if it was destroyed,
misplaced, stolen, whatever.  It was supposed to have been shipped from Yale
to the Smithsonian with a lot of the rest of the Marsh collection.  It was
never accessed into the collections of the Smithsonian.  I have not been
able to find it in the collections of the Yale Peabody, the Smithsonian, or
the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philly (on the off-chance that the ghost
of Cope might have stolen it... :-).

As for the type of Peking Man, I have a theory as to where that wound up,
but only a different sort of "bonesman" would know for certain... (he said,
crypt-ically).

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:th81@umail.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661