At the turn of the 20th century, the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, where most Ichthyornis specimens were housed, began placing many of its most interesting or important specimens on display in the museum's Great Hall.
Two panel mounts (that is, pieces where the skeleton is arranged and set into a plaster slab) were created for Ichthyornis; one for I. dispar, and one for "I. victor".
Both were created by Hugh Gibb, who prepared many of Marsh's fossils for study and display.
The I. dispar mount contained only the holotype fossils, while the "I. victor" mount was a composite incorporating a variety of different specimens to make the piece appear more complete (it did not, however, contain any part of the actual "I. victor" holotype specimen).

At some point before 1937, the catalogue number of the actual "I. victor" type specimen was mistakenly reassigned to the panel mount.
Later reports of the specimen, even by the Peabody Museum's staff, therefore mistakenly stated that the original "I. victor" specimen comprised most of the skeleton, when it was in fact only three bones.
By 1997, the situation had become so confused that Jacques Gauthier, the current curator of the museum's vertebrate paleontology collection, authorized the dismantling of both panel mounts.
This allowed the bones to be properly sorted out and studied in three dimensions, which had been impossible previously when they were embedded in plaster.
A full re-description of these specimens was published by paleontologist Julia Clarke in 2004.
At the turn of the 20th century, the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, where most Ichthyornis specimens were housed, began placing many of its most interesting or important specimens on display in the museum's Great Hall. Two panel mounts (that is, pieces where the skeleton is arranged and set into a plaster slab) were created for Ichthyornis; one for I. dispar, and one for "I. victor". Both were created by Hugh Gibb, who prepared many of Marsh's fossils for study and display. The I. dispar mount contained only the holotype fossils, while the "I. victor" mount was a composite incorporating a variety of different specimens to make the piece appear more complete (it did not, however, contain any part of the actual "I. victor" holotype specimen).
At some point before 1937, the catalogue number of the actual "I. victor" type specimen was mistakenly reassigned to the panel mount. Later reports of the specimen, even by the Peabody Museum's staff, therefore mistakenly stated that the original "I. victor" specimen comprised most of the skeleton, when it was in fact only three bones. By 1997, the situation had become so confused that Jacques Gauthier, the current curator of the museum's vertebrate paleontology collection, authorized the dismantling of both panel mounts. This allowed the bones to be properly sorted out and studied in three dimensions, which had been impossible previously when they were embedded in plaster. A full re-description of these specimens was published by paleontologist Julia Clarke in 2004.
Ichthyornis