Pteranodon
"Pteranodon" was the first pterosaur found outside of Europe. Its fossils first were found by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1870, in the Late Cretaceous Smoky Hill Chalk deposits of western Kansas. These chalk beds were deposited at the bottom of what was once the Western Interior Seaway, a large shallow sea over what now is the midsection of the North American continent. These first specimens, YPM 1160 and YPM 1161, consisted of partial wing bones, as well as a tooth from the prehistoric fish "Xiphactinus", which Marsh mistakenly believed to belong to this new pterosaur (all known pterosaurs up to that point had teeth). In 1871, Marsh named the find ""Pterodactylus oweni"", assigning it to the well-known (but much smaller) European genus "Pterodactylus". Marsh also collected more wing bones of the large pterosaur in 1871. Realizing that the name he had chosen had already been used for Harry Seeley's European pterosaur species "Pterodactylus oweni" in 1864, Marsh re-named his giant North American pterosaur Pterodactylus occidentalis, meaning "Western wing finger," in his 1872 description of the new specimen. He also named two additional species, based on size differences: Pterodactylus ingens (the largest specimen so far), and Pterodactylus velox (the smallest).
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.