This is the "type specimen," that is, the specimen used as the exemplar of a given species, for Eubrontes giganteus. Edward Hitchcock collected it in 1835 from Smith's Ferry, in the southern part of Northampton, Massachusetts. An illustration of this fossil appeared with his first article on the "fossil bird tracks" in the January 1836 issue of the American Journal of Science. At Oxford University in England, the geologist William Buckland referred to this fossil in his book in the Bridgewater Treatises series, and Hitchcock used it again in his 1858 final and major work on the topic, Ichnology of New England, as Plate LVII, Fig. 1.