A fossilized tooth fragment found in the Swiss Alps comes from a giant ichthyosaur, a carnivorous sea creature that lived more than 200 million years ago.
February 18th, 2021, 11:27AM / BY Abigail Eisenstadt
This fossilized dinosaur head and vertebrae were discovered in 1883 but only recently gained its name,
Smitanosaurus agilis. (Smithsonian)
The Wild West of the 1800s was a place of hidden treasure. In the 1840s, people swarmed the land looking to make their fortune in gold. Then, in the late 1870s, paleontologists began searching for a different kind of valuable: dinosaur fossils.
Eventually, many of these fossils made their way to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History as part of the museum s paleobiology collection. Some of the specimens have been properly identified. Others are still enigmas.