Early life Mudge was born in
Orrington, Maine to James and Ruth Mudge on August 11, 1817, and moved with his family to
Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1818. He helped support three older brothers enrolled in the
Methodist Episcopal Conference by working as a
shoemaker for 6 years, before attending
Wesleyan University. Unlike his brothers who all became
clergy, Benjamin studied science and the classics before graduating in 1840. He acquired his
Master of Arts several years later from the same institution, and passed
the bar and began practicing as a
lawyer in 1842. On September 16, 1842, he married
Mary E. Beckford; he continued his practice, and was elected
mayor of Lynn in 1852 on a
temperance platform. In 1859 he moved to
Cloverport, Kentucky, where he briefly worked as a
chemist at Breckinridge Coal and Oil Company, a local
oil refinery.) where he took a job teaching public school in
Kansas City. In Quindaro, Mudge and his family operated a waystation of the
Underground Railroad, aiding slaves fleeing from Missouri, He lectured around the state, and in 1864 delivered a series on "Scientific and Economical Geology" to the legislature in
Topeka while the bill to establish the first state
geological survey was being debated in the
House. The
Topeka Tribune wrote: After Watson Foster withdrew due to opposition, and George C. Swallow was accused of disloyalty, Mudge was appointed as the stage geologist and the director of the first
Kansas Geological Survey by Governor
Thomas Carney. He reluctantly accepted, writing the following note at the bottom of the Senate nomination: "This petition was started without my knowledge or consent. I am in favor of the appointment of Prof. W. Foster". Mudge was responsible for surveying of mineral and soil resources by the end of the year, with a budget of
US$3,500 and a staff of five. In the 1860s, there were no
railroads and very few towns west of Topeka, and the area had seen a resurgence of "
Indian trouble". Mudge moved to
Manhattan, Kansas, and despite not being able to visit all the areas of the state, he submitted
Geology of Kansas by the November 30, 1864, deadline, the first book on the geology of Kansas. The document covered
stratigraphy but primarily focused on exploitable economic resources, particularly
coal and
salt. Mudge resigned at the end of his term, but the position was renewed and Swallow was appointed to head the 1865 survey with a larger budget and staff, and completed a more extensive survey. Due to funding problems, both the 1864 and 1865 reports were not published until 1866. After the two surveys, the Kansas Geologic Survey went into abeyance until 1895, when it was permanently established at the
University of Kansas. over back pay. Image:edcope.jpg|
Edward Drinker Cope, ANS Image:Othniel Charles Marsh - Brady-Handy.jpg|
Othniel Charles Marsh, Yale Image:Louis Agassiz-2.jpg|
Louis Agassiz, Harvard image:James_Dwight_Dana.jpg|
James Dwight Dana, Yale While he maintained a small collection at KSAC, the majority of his finds were sent to Eastern paleontologists to be described. He initially corresponded in this fashion with
Fielding Bradford Meek at the
Smithsonian (primarily concerning molluscs),
Leo Lesquereux (plants),
Edward Drinker Cope at the
Academy of Natural Sciences in
Philadelphia (
vertebrates),
Othniel Charles Marsh at the
Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale,
Louis Agassiz at
Harvard, and
James Dwight Dana at
Yale. In turn, Cope visited Mudge in 1871, and Cope, Marsh, and Lesquerenx all visited in 1872. Cope and Lesquerenx published most of Mudge's discoveries from this period. Mudge discovered
Ichthyornis in 1872. While he initially planned to ship the specimen to Cope, he heard of
Othniel Charles Marsh's interest and sent it instead to his former acquaintance from
Connecticut. Marsh first described the bird in 1872, but a reevaluation in 1967 and new specimens confirmed Marsh's assessment. This was the first bird described with teeth;
Richard Owen's original description of the London Specimen of
Archaeopteryx in 1861 did not recognize its associated teeth, and assumed the bird had a beak. This was also the start of Mudge's association with Marsh, as the rivalry between Cope and Marsh (known as the "
Bone Wars") heated up.
Fossils for Marsh After his dismissal from KSAC in 1874, Mudge wrote to Marsh: Marsh hired Mudge to lead fossil hunting expeditions. He was assisted on his 1874 expedition by
Samuel Wendell Williston, who started leading his own expeditions in 1877. Mudge primarily focused on the Kansas Chalk from 1874 to 1876, but from 1876 to 1879 he expanded into Colorado discovering some of the first Jurassic dinosaurs in the
American West. According to Blackmar, "in one year he shipped over three tons of fossils, etc., to New Haven" Marsh's rival Cope in turn had Oramel Lucas and
Charles Hazelius Sternberg seeking out new finds. In 1877, Cope's team was making remarkable finds at
Como Bluff, Wyoming near
Cañon City, Colorado, and Marsh sent Mudge to establish a quarry near the location. While the quarry was eventually abandoned because the bones were too fragile to transport, Mudge and Williston discovered the
holotype specimens of Allosaurus (
A. fragilis) and
Diplodocus (
D. longus) in 1877 before the quarry was closed, and both species were named by Marsh, the former in 1877 and the latter in 1878. == Legacy ==