Mount Saint Peter
Around 1765 the skull of a "Mosasaurus" was discovered here in a limestone quarry, one of the first recognised reptile fossils, which was later acquired by the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. A more famous "Mosasaurus" fossil was found between 1770 and 1774 but was confiscated by the French in 1794 and is now in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. Later dinosaur remains were discovered here as well, belonging to "Betasuchus" and "Orthomerus", as well as turtles and fossils of smaller creatures of the sea.
Paleontology in Kansas
In 1870, O. C. Marsh led a paleontological expedition into the western United States on behalf of Yale University. Late in the November of that year they visited the area around Fort Wallace. They spent several days prospecting for fossils in modern Wallace and Logan Counties along the banks of the Smoky Hill River. Persevering against cold weather, they made several finds. One was the nearly complete skeleton of the mosasaur "Clidastes" that took four days to excavate. Among the fossils discovered by Marsh's crew in western Kansas were the far ends of two pterosaur wing metacarpals. These were the first scientifically documented fossils of the pterosaur that would later be named "Pteranodon". This formal naming occurred six years later, in 1876.