Dinosaur bones found in Washington? Of course! All over the place?

In 1876, two brothers, Alonzo and Benjamin Coplen, had a hunch and with long rods, probed a “muckky creek bottom” on their farm along Hangman Creek south of Spokane. Their efforts ultimately yielded a huge vertebra and then a shoulder blade of a huge animal. They they took the bones on the road to show to the folks in neighboring towns. They kept digging and found more as time passed, as did other neighbors on their swamp-creek areas. The original Coplen find, dubbed the Latah mammoth, has been on display in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History since the 1950s and occupies a central place in the Hall of Time.

Cool, eh?