Influence of the American Journal of Science
The influence of the American Journal of Science as a medium for the dissemination of the results of vertebrate research has been in evidence throughout this discussion, but it were well, perhaps, to emphasize that service more fully. The Journal was, as we have seen, the chief outlet for Professor Marsh’s research, for there were published in it during his lifetime no fewer than 175 papers descriptive of the forms which he studied, as well as a great part of the material in the published monographs. As Marsh left very few manuscript notes, the importance of these frequent publications in thus setting forth much that he thought and learned concerning the material is very great indeed. The combined titles of all other authors in the Journal in this line of research for the century of its life fall far short of the number produced by Marsh alone, as they include 136 all told, but the range of subjects is highly representative of the entire field of vertebrate research. It should be borne in mind, moreover, that Leidy, Cope, and Osborn each had another medium of publication, which of course is true of other workers in the great museums such as the American, National, and Carnegie, all of which issue bulletins and quarto publications for the purpose of disseminating the work of their staff. Many of the earlier announcements of the discovery of vertebrate relics appeared in the Journal, as did practically all the literature of the science of fossil footprints (ichnology), except of course the larger quartos of Hitchcock and Deane. Of the footprint papers by Hitchcock, Deane, and others, there were no fewer than thirty-two, with a number of additional communications on attendant phenomena bones and plants.
Up to 1847, except for a few foreign announcements, the Journal published almost exclusively on eastern American paleontology, the only exception being a notice of bones from Oregon by Perkins in 1842. In 1847 came the announcement of a western “Palæothere” by Prout, which marked the beginning of the researches of Leidy and others in the Bad Lands of the great Nebraska plains. The Journal thenceforth published paper after paper on forms from all over North America, and on all aspects of our science: discovery, systematic description, faunal relationships, evolutionary evidences—thus showing that breadth and catholicity which has made it so great a power in the advancement of science.