scholarly journals Ronald Rainger, An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn & Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History 1890-1935

1970 ◽  
pp. 170
Author(s):  
Eric Hedqvist
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Vertebrate Paleontology ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Henry Fairfield Osborn

Ar 1915 påböjades arbetet på The Hall of the Age of Man i American Museum of Natural History i New York. Det leddes av museets inflytelserike direktör Henry Fairfield Osborn. Utställningen fylldes av arcefakter och fossil från forhistoriska människor.

Establishing vertebrate paleontology at Chicago's Field Columbian Museum, 1893—1898

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL D. BRINKMAN
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Vertebrate Paleontology ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Natural History Museums ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Carnegie Museum ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Extensive Body

By the late nineteenth century, as a consequence of the costly, far-flung, labor-intensive, and specimen-centered nature of the discipline, American vertebrate paleontology had become centralized at large collections maintained by a few universities and major natural history museums. Foremost among the latter group were the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia; the American Museum of Natural History, New York; the National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC; the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; and the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago. There is an extensive body of popular and historical literature reviewing the establishment and early development of the vertebrate paleontology programs at most of these institutions, especially the American Museum. The Field Columbian Museum, however, has received relatively little attention in this literature. The present paper begins to redress this imbalance by reviewing the establishment of vertebrate paleontology at the Field Columbian Museum from the museum's foundation in 1893, through the end of 1898, when the museum added a vertebrate paleontologist to its curatorial staff. An account of the Field Columbian Museum's first expedition for fossil vertebrates in the summer of 1898 is included.

Collectors and Entrepreneurs: Hatcher, Wortman, and the Structure of American Vertebrate Paleontology Circa 1900

1990 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Rainger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Vertebrate Paleontology ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Carnegie Museum ◽  
Peabody Museum ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Henry Fairfield Osborn

John Bell Hatcher (1861-1904) and Jacob L. Wortman (1856-1926) were two of the most prominent figures in late nineteenth-century American vertebrate paleontology. Working at leading centers for the science, including Yale's Peabody Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, each was responsible for significant discoveries of fossil vertebrates and notable contributions to taxonomy and biostratigraphy. Yet both had itinerant and, by their own admissions, highly frustrating careers. Traditionally their problems have been explained in terms of personality, as a result of their sensitive, volatile temperaments. Yet their careers and difficulties also reflect the structure of American vertebrate paleontology at the time, a discipline centered in museums and under the direction of wealthy, powerful entrepreneurs. Men such as Othniel Charles Marsh and Henry Fairfield Osborn financed and helped to promote work in vertebrate paleontology, but the context within which such work was conducted also limited opportunities for Hatcher, Wortman, and others.

Henry Fairfield Osborn and Jurassic Dinosaur Reconnaissance in the San Juan Basin, Along the Colorado-Utah Border, 1893-1900

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Brinkman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
San Juan ◽  
Eastern Slope ◽  
American Museum ◽  
San Juan Basin ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Henry Fairfield Osborn

Henry Fairfield Osborn, vertebrate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, did virtually all of his fieldwork by proxy. Working mostly from his New York office, he detailed a score of fieldworkers to locate and claim fossil localities in advance of collectors from rival museums. This history of a long-forgotten Jurassic dinosaur reconnaissance in the San Juan Basin, which was materially unsuccessful, explores how Osborn found and evaluated potential new field localities. He was relentless in pursuit of fossils, especially in the face of worthy competition. He received his first unsolicited tip about fossils along the Colorado-Utah border in 1893. A collector sent to scout the locality found Jurassic dinosaurs in poor condition and left them behind. Following a second tip about fossils in the same region in 1899—at the height of the second Jurassic dinosaur rush—Osborn sent two more expeditions to search the area. Both of these parties returned empty-handed also. Reliable locality data regarding the presence of typical Jurassic vertebrates would have been very useful to geologists like Whitman Cross, who was then attempting to correlate beds west of the Rockies with better-known strata on the eastern slope. But, in order to maintain a competitive advantage, Osborn kept this locality data to himself.

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