30 Facts About Barnum Brown

Barnum Brown, commonly referred to as Mr Bones, was an American paleontologist.

Barnum Brown 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.

Barnum Brown was born in Carbondale, Kansas on February 12,1873 to William and Clara Silver Brown.

Barnum Brown finished the highest level of schooling there in 1889, at the age of 16, and embarked on a four-month wagon journey to Montana with his father.

Sources claim multiple purposes for the trip, including William's desire to give Barnum Brown traveling experience, evaluating possibilities for a new homestead, or to avoid a legal complaint of incest filed against William by Barnum Brown's oldest sister, Melissa.

In 1896, Wortman needed a replacement for an assistant, and Williston suggested Barnum Brown; he left his classes at the University of Kansas before the semester ended to accompany Wortman on an expedition to the Morrison Formation in Wyoming.

Barnum Brown impressed Wortman and the head curator of the AMNH's Vertebrate Paleontology Department, Henry Fairfield Osborn, with the discovery of a nearly complete Coryphodon skeleton near the Greybull River.

Barnum Brown was known to collect or obtain anything of possible scientific value.

Barnum Brown worked a handful of years in Como Bluff, Wyoming for AMNH in the late 1890s, discovering a prominent Diplodocus specimen and introducing new jacketing and collecting procedures.

Barnum Brown led an expedition to the Hell Creek Formation of southeastern Montana, where, in 1902, he discovered and excavated the first documented remains of Tyrannosaurus rex.

In 1910, Barnum Brown was promoted to Associate Curator in the Vertebrate Paleontology Department at the AMNH.

In 1910, in one of their most significant finds, Barnum Brown's team uncovered several hind feet from a group of Albertosaurus in Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park.

Barnum Brown recommenced excavations there in the summer of 1998, and examination of the site under the Tyrrell Museum's auspices lasted until August, 2005.

Barnum Brown conducted his last formal field work season at the age of 83, when he returned to the Claggett Shale in Montana in 1955, where he collected a plesiosaur skeleton.

Barnum Brown was a member of Sigma Xi and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, as well as a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the Royal Geographical Society, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Paleontological Society.

In early 1923, Barnum Brown travelled with his wife Lilian to Yangon, the capital of what was then Burma.

Barnum Brown focused his fossil prospection along areas of Pondaung Sandstone.

Barnum Brown did not recognize 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.

Barnum Brown 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.

Barnum 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, Barnum Brown was frequently photographed wearing a large fur coat.

On February 13,1904, Barnum Brown married school teacher Marion Raymond in Oxford, New York.

Barnum Brown accompanied him on several expeditions, including the 1905 trip to the Hell Creek Formation during which Brown discovered two additional Tyrannosaurus rex specimens.

Barnum Brown would go on to become a dean at Radcliffe College and Longwood College, as well as the president of Chevy Chase Junior College.

Barnum Brown wrote a memoir about her father, Let's Call Him Barnum, in 1987.

In 1920, Barnum Brown met socialite Lillian MacLaughlin Barnum Brown while traveling in Egypt, and the couple were married in Calcutta, India in 1922.

Barnum Brown wrote three memoirs about her expeditions with her husband, I Married a Dinosaur, Bring 'em Back Petrified, and Cleopatra Slept Here.

In early February of 1963, Barnum Brown slipped into a sudden coma and died on February 5.

Barnum Brown was buried in River View Cemetery in Oxford, New York, the hometown of his first wife, Marion Raymond.

An homage to Barnum Brown was in the 1998 IMAX film T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous, in which he was played by actor Laurie Murdoch.