Report of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories; Volume 3. The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West, Volume III

Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1884. Very Thick Quarto. xxxiv, errata, first part 757pp., second part 759-1009pp. Includes 40 textural woodcuts, 132 extraordinary full page plates (which often are lacking) of which three are double paged and three are folding all with descriptive over leafs. This work is designed to present figures and descriptions of the vast number of species of vertebrates of all classes, but more especially of the mammals of the Tertiary lake-basins of the American West. This was the first time a paleontologist has been able to present a complete and wide-ranging work on the Tertiary period of the Western region. Besides including extinct orders, suborders and families, it has an incredible bearing on evolution (as George Gaylord Simpson was later to note). It took over a year for the Federal bindery to prepare the collations and binding of the massive volume (it weighs just under 15 pounds. It was initially reviewed in the Naturalist which noted that is was a monument of energy and devotion to the science of paleontology. After E.D. Cope's notes and letter to Professor Hayden, this is the most extensive work ever done on the enormous discoveries of fossils including dinosaurs. Re-Bound in maroon cloth, renewed endpapers, previous owner's names, light dampstain to upper edge of first few leaves. Internally text and plates are clean and bright without foxing.