Pteranodon
While the first "Pteranodon" wing bones were collected by Marsh and Cope in the early 1870s, the first "Pteranodon" skull was found on May 2, 1876, along the Smoky Hill River in Wallace County (now Logan County), Kansas, USA, by Samuel Wendell Williston, a fossil collector working for Marsh. A second, smaller skull soon was discovered as well. These skulls showed that the North American pterosaurs were different from any European species, in that they lacked teeth and had bony crests on their skulls. Marsh recognized this major difference, describing the specimens as "distinguished from all previously known genera of the order Pterosauria by the entire absence of teeth." Marsh recognized that this characteristic warranted a new genus, and he coined the name "Pteranodon" ("wing without tooth") in 1876. Marsh reclassified all the previously named North American species from "Pterodactylus" to "Pteranodon". He considered the smaller skull to belong to "Pteranodon occidentalis", based on its size. Marsh classified the larger skull, YPM 1117, in the new species "Pteranodon longiceps", which he thought to be a medium-sized species in between the small "P. occidentalis" and the large "P. ingens". Marsh also named several additional species: Pteranodon comptus and "Pteranodon nanus" were named for fragmentary skeletons of small individuals, while "Pteranodon gracilis" was based on a wing bone that he mistook for a pelvic bone. He soon realized his mistake, and re-classified that specimen again into a separate genus, which he named "Nyctosaurus". "P, nanus" was also later recognized as a "Nyctosaurus" specimen.
Paleontology in Massachusetts
Among the earliest major fossil discoveries in Massachusetts occurred during the spring of 1802. Pliny Moody had uncovered a piece of reddish sandstone with bird-like three toed footprints while ploughing on his father's farm in South Hadley. More fossil footprints were discovered a few decades later, in 1835. At the time, Greenfield Massachusetts was paving when residents noticed footprints on the sandstone slabs that resembled those of turkeys. The rocks used in the project had been excavated at Turners Falls. This location would turn out to be the most productive dinosaur tracksite in the Connecticut Valley. Later that year, the fossil footprints discovered while paving Greenfield were brought to the attention of local naturalist and physician James Deane, whose curiosity was piqued. Deane wrote a letter to Amherst College geology professor Edward B. Hitchcock. Hitchcock spent the rest of the summer traveling through the Connecticut Valley examining the fossil footprints. The next year Hitchcock wrote a scientific paper on the fossil footprints of the Connecticut Valley. He thought the tracks were made by giant birds. Later, in 1843, James Deane began publishing on the Connecticut Valley track fossils with a paper in the American Journal of Science. In 1847 the ichnospecies Otozoum moodi was named after Pliny Moody.