University Archivist and Associate Director of Special Collections Kathleen Smith does not wear a fedora or carry a whip, a la Indiana Jones. But one day last spring, she and Scott Martin, former director of logistics and access services for the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, found something in the basement of Branscomb Quadrangle that Indy might have been proud to uncover.
While moving a plaster cast of the Harold S. Vanderbilt statue in the Branscomb basement, Smith heard someone say, “Look in here,” near the small crypt-like area next to the statue’s crate.
“When I took out my phone and put some light on the area, I started freaking out,” Smith says. “I told Scott and the movers, ‘I think this is one of the missing plaster casts of the dinosaurs!’”
Just a few weeks before Smith and Martin found the casts, Andy Flick, scientific coordinator for the Evolutionary Studies Initiative, had asked Smith if there was any information in Special Collections about the whereabouts of plaster casts that were used for teaching biology and geology at Vanderbilt in the 1870s. Flick is leading a 2023 Sesquicentennial Grant–funded project titled “Evolution at Vanderbilt: A Historical Perspective” that is exploring the history of evolutionary studies on campus.
“I had searched our records and couldn’t find anything about their disposition,” Smith says, “so I knew we had gold right there in the basement of the Branscomb Quad.
“I just couldn’t believe one of them had been stashed in the basement.”
“Andy told me about the plaster casts and how they ended up as part of the teaching objects for geology professor James Safford [in the 1870s]. I just couldn’t believe one of them had been stashed in the basement,” Smith says.
ESI was able to identify them as a plesiosaur cast that once was part of Vanderbilt’s natural science museum in Science Hall and later Kirkland after the university’s founding in the 1870s.
“It wasn’t until Andy verified it that it hit me as to what an amazing find this was,” Smith says.
Plesiosaurs were large marine reptiles that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The plasters found in the Branscomb basement were cast on a complete fossil marine skeleton that was excavated in 1848 near the north Yorkshire coast of England and named Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni after an Irish surgeon and anatomist named Sir Philip Crampton. According to the National Museum of Ireland, which houses the original specimen, the dinosaur-era marine reptile would have preyed on belemnites (an extinct order of squid-like cephalopods), fish, ichthyosaurs and smaller plesiosaurs. This particular plesiosaur is a “type specimen,” important for understanding how plesiosaurs evolved over time as well as for defining their taxonomy.
Though the plaster is quite old and fragile and the head is missing, it is one of only six plesiosaur skeleton casts known to exist. According to research done for the ESI Sesquicentennial Grant, the casts of the plesiosaur likely were ordered from the catalog of renowned geologist Henry A. Ward, which featured the best fossil casts available in the 1870s. It is thought that by December 1875, Ward’s team had installed the fossils and casts in the museum on the third floor of Science Hall.
“Why should students in the 1800s be the only ones to experience the wonder of looking upon a 24-foot-long sea monster and being immersed in the time of dinosaurs?”
Even without a head, Flick says this is just the centerpiece needed to rebuild the once-great natural history museum at Vanderbilt. When rebuilt, the cast will stretch nearly 24 feet in length.
“We’ve found the plesiosaur, but what of the giant sloth?” Flick wrote in an August 2024 story. “ESI is developing spaces around campus that expose students to the wonders of natural history” on the seventh floor of Medical Research Building III and Stevenson Center 7. Flick asks: “Why should students in the 1800s be the only ones to experience the wonder of looking upon a 24-foot-long sea monster and being immersed in the time of dinosaurs?”
Smith says they have checked the basements of other buildings on campus, but so far, no other 1870s casts have been found.
“There is just something that draws you to certain things and makes you feel like you’re Indiana Jones unraveling an ancient mystery,” Martin said last spring to a Vanderbilt Hustler reporter. “The plaster casts were one of those. Finding these kinds of artifacts that connect you with significant events reminds me that Vanderbilt has been making an impact for a long time and has a rich history.”
