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 Pennsylvania
One of the earliest notable events in Pennsylvania paleontology was the October 5th, 1787 presentation by Caspar Wistar and Timothy Matlack of a probable dinosaur metatarsal discovered in Late Cretaceous rocks near Woodbury Creek in New Jersey as "'a large thigh bone'" to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. During the industrial revolution, Carboniferous-aged coal deposits in Pennsylvania were the sites of serendipitous discoveries of early fossil tetrapod trackways. Such discoveries generally occur when the excavation of coal mines removes the rock underlying the trackway, leaving it exposed on the tunnel's ceiling. Later, during the 1840s, Charles Lyell examined some local purported fossil bird and mammal tracks and found that they were actually petroglyphs left by local indigenous people. Depictions of trace fossils in indigenous rock art are known from throughout North America.