Barnum Brown

Barnum Brown ( born February 12, 1873 in Carbondale, Kansas, † February 5, 1963 in New York, NY) was an American paleontologist. He is considered one of the most famous " dinosaur hunter " of the 20th century. He was the first documented fossil of Tyrannosaurus rex and dug in the American West on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History ( AMNH ).

Life

Brown was named after the circus entrepreneur PT Barnum. He began in 1890 to study at the University of Kansas, but he broke off to collect before a promotion fossils and to trade with them. In 1894 he began under the direction of paleontologist Samuel Wendell Williston with the excavation of fossils and participated in the rescue of a triceratops skull. He collected for the AMNH in the late 1890s in Wyoming (near Howe Ranch ) and then in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, where he dug up about 10 years. The site was extremely productive and for the recovery of the fossils he sat with his team, as it was still common, even dynamite. After that he went to Alberta in Canada and the reference to the Red Deer River at Drumheller, which toured his team with a raft. They dug there in competition with Hazelius Charles Sternberg and his sons.

1897 to 1942 he was deputy director of the American Museum of Natural History, where he was responsible for the famous collection of dinosaur skeletons of the Museum under Henry Fairfield Osborn, which he founded in 1910 with. He was later abroad as excavators road, where he worked in the way the two world wars for the U.S. intelligence services and occasionally for oil companies.

Brown discovered at least eight previously unknown species of dinosaurs and his work provided an important contribution to the image of the dinosaurs that lived in the late Cretaceous North America. His most important discovery he discovered in 1902 in Hell Creek in the northwestern United States. This fossil was about 70 bones far from complete, but got the name Tyrannosaurus rex - King of the tyrant lizards. The T -Rex was in accordance with the former idea shown strong upright stance, which could be revised by more recent findings and comparisons in nature (including with birds ). Clean because of its appearance, the foundation stone was laid for the attitude that the T-rex was a hunter.

In 1952 he became an honorary member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

He was married twice. His second wife Lilian Brown accompanied him on expeditions and wrote a book of memories.