José Bonaparte

José Fernando Bonaparte ( born June 14, 1928 in Rosario, Santa Fe ( Argentina) Province) is an Argentine paleontologist.

Life

José Bonaparte, was born as the son of an Italian sailor in Rosario, Argentina and grew up in Mercedes, Buenos Aires Province. He never received any formal training in paleontology, but began to gather at an early age fossils and built a museum in his hometown. Later he became curator of the National University of Tucumán, where he also received in 1974 an honorary doctorate. In the late 1970s, he was a senior scientist at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia in Buenos Aires.

Bonaparte is regarded as the doyen of dinosaur researchers in Argentina. In 1993 he was with Rodolfo Coria first to describe one of the largest and tallest land animals, the Argentinosaurus. More first descriptions of him are Carnotaurus, Abelisaurus, Saltasaurus, Alvarezsaurus, Riojasaurus, Andesaurus, Amargasaurus and the introduction of the group of Neosauropoda. As a particularly rich reference proved to be for him and colleagues Cañadón Asfalto formation in the mid-1980s to the mid-1970s he made numerous findings.