Scholarly Elasmosaurs

Cope's paper on Elasmosaurus, as we all know, was originally describing an animal that was constructed in reverse in relation to how it should be represented. This appeared like this in his paper:

Academy of Natural Sciences

Cope then corrected, though he did not correct all of the paper leaving in many typographical errors and errors in reference to directions (proximal/anterior) of body parts, the image. The corrected image appeared in this manner:

Academy of Natural Sciences

Since that time other papers have come out on Elasmosaurus (Everhart 2005, Sachs 2005, Davidson 2002; to name a few recent articles) Most of these papers review other Elasmosaurus finds but some also review Cope's work and one, the Davidson paper, attempts to answer the question "How did he make that big a mistake anyhow?" Basically, the idea of that paper is that there was plenty of evidence at the time, including other known plesiosaurs, that there is not plausible reason that Cope would not have been able to put Elasmosaurus together correctly the first time. Sachs' paper redescribes Elasmosaurus while Everhart's describes characters that were missing from the type specimen using newer elements of Elasmosaurus not yet described at the time. Everhart's paper is free online; Sachs may require contacting the publisher; and Davidson's is available through BioOne with subscription to their services (my school has access that I can use).