American paleontologist (1873?1963)
Barnum Brown
(February 12, 1873 ? February 5, 1963),
[1]
commonly referred to as
Mr. Bones
, was an American paleontologist. Named after the circus showman
P. T. Barnum
, he discovered the first documented remains of
Tyrannosaurus
during a career that made him one of the most famous fossil hunters working from the late Victorian era into the early 20th century.
Fossil dinosaur expeditions
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Sponsored by the
American Museum of Natural History
(AMNH), Brown traversed the country bargaining and trading for fossils. His field was not limited to dinosaurs. He was known to collect or obtain anything of possible scientific value. Often, he simply sent money to have fossils shipped to the AMNH, and any new specimen of interest often resulted in a flurry of letters between the discoverer and Brown. With respect to nomenclature, Brown often named fossils after people or events that were relevant to his life at the time of discovery.
After working a handful of years in
Wyoming
for AMNH in the late 1890s, Brown led an expedition to the
Hell Creek Formation
of southeastern
Montana
. There, in 1902, he discovered and excavated the first documented remains of
Tyrannosaurus rex
.
[2]
[3]
The Hell Creek digs produced extravagant quantities of fossils, enough to fill up whole train cars. As was common practice then, Brown's crews used controlled blasts of dynamite to remove the tons of rock covering their fossil discoveries. Everything was moved with horse-drawn wagons and pure manpower. Seldom were any site data recorded.
After nearly a decade in
Montana
, Brown headed to
Alberta, Canada
, and the
Red Deer River
near
Drumheller
. There, Brown and his crew spent the middle 1910s floating down the river on a
flatboat
, stopping along the way to prospect for fossils at promising-looking sites. Trying to outdo them along the same stretch of river was the famous
Sternberg
family of fossil hunters. A playful, friendly rivalry arose between the Browns and the Sternbergs, and their competing discoveries went down in the annals of paleontology.
[4]
In 1910, in one of their most significant finds, Brown's team uncovered several hind feet from a group of
Albertosaurus
in
Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park
. For years, the fossils were largely forgotten in the recesses of the
American Museum of Natural History
in
New York City
. In the 1990s, Dr.
Phil Currie
, then head of dinosaur research at the
Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology
in Canada, relocated the site of the bones using only an old photograph as a guide. He recommenced excavations there in the summer of 1998, and examination of the site under the Tyrrell Museum's auspices lasted until August, 2005. However, after Currie took a new job at the
University of Alberta
, a new crew began working at the site in 2006, intending to continue for several years.
[5]
[
failed verification
]
An homage to Brown was in the 1998
IMAX
film
T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous
, in which he was played by actor
Laurie Murdoch
.
Earliest anthropoid discovery
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In early 1923, Brown travelled with his then-wife Lilian to
Yangon
, the capital of what was then
Burma
. Brown focused his fossil prospection along areas of Pondaung
Sandstone
. A mandible with three teeth was recorded and catalogued at an exposure of sandstone outside of the town of
Mogaung
. He did not recognise the significance of his find until 14 years later, when vertebrate paleontologist
Edwin H. Colbert
, of the AMNH, identified the fossil as a new species of
primate
and the earliest known
anthropoid
in the world. He named the holotype
Amphipithecus mogaungensis
, or the "ape-like creature of Mogaung", but considerable debate remains regarding its status as a primate and the lack of fossils compounds this issue.
[6]
Public persona
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Brown lived at the tail end of an unprecedented age of scientific discovery, and was one of its more colorful practitioners. At dig sites in Canada, Brown was frequently photographed wearing a large fur coat.
During
World War I
and
World War II
, he worked as an "intelligence asset". During his many trips abroad, he was not above picking up spare cash acting as a
corporate spy
for oil companies.
Personal life
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Barnum went to highschool in Carbondale, Kansas. After highschool, he attended the University of Kansas.
Brown's second wife, Lilian MacLaughlin Brown,
[7]
wrote a book of memoirs,
I Married a Dinosaur
(Dodd Mead, 1950), about her expeditions with her husband. She also wrote
Bring 'em back petrified
(1950)
[8]
about a Guatemala expedition, and
Cleopatra Slept Here
(Dodd Mead, 1951).
[9]
Brown was buried in
Oxford, New York
, the hometown of his first wife,
[10]
Marion Raymond.
[11]
Their daughter,
Frances R. Brown
, raised by the Raymonds,
[12]
was dean of residence and student affairs at
Radcliffe College
at the time of her father's death.
[13]
References
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Sources
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External links
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