 When Cope arrived back in the United States after his tour of Europe in 1878 , he had nearly two years of fossil findings from Lucas . Among these dinosaurs was Camarasaurus , one of the most recognizable dinosaur recreations of the time . The summer of 1879 took Cope to Salt Lake City , San Francisco , and north to Oregon , where he was amazed at the rich flora and the blueness of the Pacific Ocean . In 1879 , the United States Congress consolidated the various government survey teams into the United States Geological Survey with Clarence King as its leader . This was discouraging to Cope because King named Marsh , an old college friend , as the chief paleontologist . The period of Cope 's and Marsh 's paleontological digs in the American West spanned from 1877 to 1892 , by which time both men exhausted much of their financial resources . 
