ABSTRACT
In early 1850, Tennessee State Geologist Gerard Troost (1776–1850) completed a manuscript on fossil crinoids that should have been a landmark work in the study of this group. Despite public testimony to the importance of this work before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in the American Journal of Science, Troost was unable to get legislative support to complete the revision of the manuscript and produce the necessary plates. He then sent his manuscript to the Smithsonian Institution. His death only weeks later was but one factor resulting in a half-century delay during which his manuscript and the related collections were repeatedly misplaced and/or neglected and his species were usurped or independently discovered by others. Despite the ways in which chance events of timing or association combined time and again to delay publication of Troost’s findings, his work was never entirely lost. The resulting story is a rich case study in the process of establishing scientific priority in nineteenth-century America.
