Neck, Tail, Trade

In process of assembly last week in Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History was the skeleton of a 74-ft. dinosaur, a 130,000,000-year-old relic not much different in appearance from a few other such relics in a few other U. S. museums. This monster's recent history, however, was unique.

The skeleton was discovered some years ago by diggers from Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum which had long been probing the great dinosaur graveyard in the desolate badlands near Jensen, Utah. Having sent an abundance of bones back to Pittsburgh, the Carnegie men left the skeleton partly exposed for tourists to gape at, other diggers to retrieve. In due time a party from Washington's Smithsonian Institution arrived, began busily to exhume the remains. They quickly discovered that the neck vertebrae were missing. When high & low search failed to disclose them, it was decided to remove the neck from another dinosaur which lay nearby and which seemed to be of the same species. The neck and the neckless skeleton were shipped back to Washington, mounted as a single specimen.

Next on the site was a group of scientists from the University of Utah. They set about disinterring the second skeleton, found that the neck was missing. Investigation revealed that the Smithsonian Institution had the neck. The harassed Utah diggers then discovered that their skeleton also lacked a tail. Investigation revealed that the tail had been encountered some yards away from the body by the original Carnegie party, had been sent back to Pittsburgh.

While all concerned pondered the fact that the skeleton was scattered like the pages of a Gutenberg Bible--the neck in Washington, the tail in Pittsburgh, the head and body in Utah--the Smithsonian made the cataclysmic discovery that its neck and the rest of its specimen were of two different species.

Into this roiled situation stepped a kindly bystander, the American Museum of Natural History, to help & advise, mediate & make peace. So tactful was the peacemaker that when the smoke had cleared it was observed that the dismembered monster--the neck from Washington, the tail from Pittsburgh, the head and body from Utah--had all traveled to Manhattan and into the maw of the American Museum.

This final chapter was explained by the Museum's bald, able Paleontologist Barnum Brown. "It was done," said Mr. Brown, "by trading."

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