| William
Parker Foulke was a US scientist and dinosaur artist who found the first
American dinosaur skeleton, Hadrosaurus, a duck-billed dinosaur.
The fossilized bones were found by workmen in a Cretaceous marl
(a crumbly type of soil) pit on the John E. Hopkins farm in Haddonfield,
New Jersey beginning in 1838. Foulke heard of the discovery and recognized
its importance in 1858. The dinosaur was excavated and named by US anatomist
Joseph Leidy who named it Hadrosaurus foulkii (meaning "Foulke's
big lizard"). |