Collection consists of two copies of the entire newspaper Fargo Forum of Wednesday January 10, 1893, "Second Year, Number 45" plus a scrap of Saturday January 2, 1893's "Second Year, Number 43". According to Curator Ted Daeschler, who transferred the collection from the Division of Vertebrate Zoology (Paleontology), a number of vertebrate fossils collected in North Dakota by E. D. Cope were originally wrapped in scraps of this newspaper, including the scrap in this collection. Daeschler and curators prior to him kept several bone/matrix packets wrapped in situ, which remain so as of December 2011. The complete papers here were associated with those fossils.

A note in Daeschler's hand records:

1893 ND Newspaper Wrappings All wrapped in one bundle with notation "26 July 189?" "post temporal skull" "?? Dinosaur #1" Each box wrapped seperately in bundle