Barnum Brown (February 12, 1873 – February 5, 1963), commonly referred to as Mr. Bones, was an American paleontologist. He discovered the first documented remains of ''

Tyrannosaurus ''Tyrannosaurus'' () is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The type species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' ( meaning 'king' in Latin), often shortened to ''T. rex'' or colloquially t-rex, is one of the best represented theropods. It lived througho ...

'' during a career that made him one of the most famous fossil hunters working from the late Victorian era into the early 20th century.

Family and early life

Barnum Brown was born in

Carbondale, Kansas Carbondale is a city in Osage County, Kansas, Osage County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the city was 1,352. It is located south of Topeka, Kansas, Topeka along the U.S. Route 75 i ...

on February 12, 1873 to William and Clara Silver Brown. Brown's parents moved to Kansas in 1859, traveling by covered wagon with their daughter, Melissa. Their second daughter, Alice Elizabeth, was born in 1860 in Osage County, Kansas, where the family would build a one-room cabin on top of a

coal seam Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extrac ...

. William made a living in Kansas first by raising corn, hogs, and cattle, but the political turmoil of

Bleeding Kansas Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War, was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the ...

in the late 1850s and 1860s led to arson and theft of crops and livestock; he supported the family by digging and selling coal, as well as hauling supplies for the government with a freight line of ox-drawn wagons. In 1867, the Browns gave birth to their first son, Frank, who, in a few years, would be the one to suggest P.T. Barnum as a namesake for his little brother. As a young boy, Brown helped with household chores around the farm and began his first fossil collection while following the stripping plow, which unearthed fossil corals and Native American

arrowheads An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, or sometimes for special purposes such as signaling. ...

. Recognizing Brown's interest in science, his parents elected to send him to the only formal education available in Carbondale. He finished the highest level of schooling there in 1889, at the age of 16, and embarked on a four-month wagon journey to

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

with his father. Sources claim multiple purposes for the trip, including William's desire to give Brown traveling experience, evaluating possibilities for a new homestead, or to avoid a legal complaint of incest filed against William by Brown's oldest sister, Melissa. Upon returning from the trip in the fall, Brown began attending high school in Lawrence, then matriculated at the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...

in 1893.

University of Kansas

After graduating from high school, Brown attended the University of Kansas and took an early interest in archaeology and paleontology. As a freshman, he took a course with

Samuel Wendell Williston Samuel Wendell Williston (July 10, 1852 – August 30, 1918) was an American educator, entomologist, and Paleontology, paleontologist who was the first to propose that birds developed flight Origin of birds#Origin of bird flight, cursorially (by ...

, who then invited Brown, along with

Ermine Cowles Case Ermine Cowles Case (September 11, 1871CASE, Emine Cowles
in ''

Elmer S. Riggs, on a fossil collecting trip to Nebraska and South Dakota in the summer of 1894. Williston would become Brown's advisor and primary professor at KU, and invited him on another summer expedition to Wyoming in 1895.

American Museum of Natural History career

While working in South Dakota with Williston in 1894, Brown met a crew from the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconn ...

(AMNH), led by paleontologist Jacob Wortman. In 1896, Wortman needed a replacement for an assistant, and Williston suggested Brown; he left his classes at the University of Kansas before the semester ended to accompany Wortman on an expedition to the

Morrison Formation The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock found in the western United States which has been the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. It is composed of mudstone, sandstone, siltston ...

in Wyoming. 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 ''Coryphodon'' (from Greek , "point", and , "tooth", meaning ''peaked tooth'', referring to "the development of the angles of the ridges into points n the molars") is an extinct genus of pantodonts of the family Coryphodontidae. ''Coryphodo ...

'' skeleton near the Greybull River. In early 1897, Osborn offered Brown a job as an assistant curator at the AMNH as well as a scholarship for graduate work at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. Sponsored by the 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. DiplodocusWyoming

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. He also led an expedition to the

Hell Creek Formation The Hell Creek Formation is an intensively studied division of mostly Upper Cretaceous and some lower Paleocene rocks in North America, named for exposures studied along Hell Creek, near Jordan, Montana. The Formation (stratigraphy), formation s ...

of southeastern

, where, in 1902, he discovered and excavated the first documented remains of ''Tyrannosaurus rex''. In 1910, Brown was promoted to Associate Curator in the Vertebrate Paleontology Department at the AMNH. 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. AMNH scow Mary Jane

After nearly a decade in

, Brown headed to

Alberta, Canada Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

, and the

Red Deer River The Red Deer River is a river in Alberta and a small portion of Saskatchewan, Canada. It is a major tributary of the South Saskatchewan River and is part of the larger Saskatchewan / Nelson River, Nelson system that empties into Hudson Bay. T ...

near

Drumheller Drumheller is a town on the Red Deer River in the badlands of east-central Alberta, Canada. It is located northeast of Calgary and south of Stettler. The Drumheller portion of the Red Deer River valley, often referred to as Dinosaur Vall ...

. 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. In 1910, in one of their most significant finds, Brown's team uncovered several hind feet from a group of ''

Albertosaurus ''Albertosaurus'' (; meaning "Alberta lizard") is a genus of large tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in northwestern North America during the early to middle Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous period, about 71 million yea ...

'' in Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park. For years, the fossils were largely forgotten in the recesses of the

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. 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 The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

, a new crew began working at the site in 2006, intending to continue for several years. 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 The Plesiosauria or plesiosaurs are an Order (biology), order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared in the latest Triassic Period (geology), Period, possibly in the Rhaetian st ...

skeleton. He was a member of

Sigma Xi Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society () is an international non-profit honor society for scientists and engineers. Sigma Xi was founded at Cornell University by a faculty member and graduate students in 1886 and is one of the oldest ...

and the

Society of Vertebrate Paleontology The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) is a professional organization that was founded in the United States in 1940 to advance the science of vertebrate paleontology around the world. Mission and activities SVP has about 2,300 members inte ...

, as well as a fellow of the

Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. History The society was founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1888 by Alexander Winchell, John J. Stevenson, Charles H. Hi ...

, the

Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...

, the

American Association of Petroleum Geologists The American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) is one of the world's largest professional geological societies with about 17,000 members across 129 countries. The AAPG works to "advance the science of geology, especially as it relates to ...

, the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), originally founded as the Lyceum of Natural History in January 1817, is a nonprofit professional society based in New York City, with more than 20,000 members from 100 countries. It is the fourth-oldes ...

, and the Paleontological Society.

Earliest anthropoid discovery

In early 1923, Brown travelled with his wife Lilian to

Yangon Yangon, formerly romanized as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar. Yangon was the List of capitals of Myanmar, capital of Myanmar until 2005 and served as such until 2006, when the State Peace and Dev ...

, the capital of what was then

Burma Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...

. Brown focused his fossil prospection along areas of Pondaung

Sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

. A mandible with three teeth was recorded and catalogued at an exposure of sandstone outside of the town of

Mogaung Mogaung ( ; ) is a town in Kachin State, Myanmar. It is situated on the Mandalay-Myitkyina railway line. History Mogaung or Möng Kawng was the name and capital (royal seat) of a relatively major one of the petty Shan (ethnic Tai) princ ...

. He 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 Primates is an order (biology), order of mammals, which is further divided into the Strepsirrhini, strepsirrhines, which include lemurs, galagos, and Lorisidae, lorisids; and the Haplorhini, haplorhines, which include Tarsiiformes, tarsiers a ...

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.

Public persona

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. Barnum Brown

During

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

and

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, he worked as an "intelligence asset" for the

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first intelligence agency of the United States, formed during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines ...

and the Bureau of Economic Warfare. During his many trips abroad, he was not above picking up spare cash acting as a corporate spy for oil companies. Sinclair Oil funded many of Brown's expeditions and research, particularly during the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

, and the company continues to use '' Diplodocus'', discovered by Brown, as its logo.

Personal life and death

On February 13, 1904, Brown married school teacher Marion Raymond in Oxford, New York. She accompanied him on several expeditions, including the 1905 trip to the Hell Creek Formation during which Brown discovered two additional ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' specimens. The couple had a daughter, Frances R. Brown, in 1908. After Marion died of

scarlet fever Scarlet fever, also known as scarlatina, is an infectious disease caused by ''Streptococcus pyogenes'', a Group A streptococcus (GAS). It most commonly affects children between five and 15 years of age. The signs and symptoms include a sore ...

in 1910, Frances was raised primarily by her maternal grandparents. She would go on to become a dean at

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard Colle ...

and Longwood College, as well as the president of Chevy Chase Junior College. She also wrote a memoir about her father, ''Let's Call Him Barnum,'' in 1987. In 1920, Brown met socialite Lillian MacLaughlin Brown while traveling in Egypt, and the couple were married in

Calcutta Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern ba ...

, India in 1922. She wrote three memoirs about her expeditions with her husband, ''I Married a Dinosaur'' (1950), ''Bring 'em Back Petrified'' (1950), and ''Cleopatra Slept Here'' (1951) In early February of 1963, Brown slipped into a sudden coma and died on February 5. Brown was buried in River View Cemetery in

Oxford, New York Oxford is a town in Chenango County, New York, United States. The town contains a village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hu ...

, the hometown of his first wife, Marion Raymond. An homage to Brown was in the 1998

IMAX IMAX is a proprietary system of High-definition video, high-resolution cameras, film formats, film projectors, and movie theater, theaters known for having very large screens with a tall aspect ratio (image), aspect ratio (approximately ei ...

film '' T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous'', in which he was played by actor Laurie Murdoch.

References

Sources

* ''Barnum Brown: Dinosaur Hunter'', Walker Books for Young Readers (2006)
Archival Field Notebooks of Paleontological Expeditions
– American Museum of Natural History

* ''Bones for Barnum Brown: Adventures of a Dinosaur Hunter'' (1985) * ''Tyrannosaurus Rex & Barnum Brown'' (Dinosaurs & Their Discoverers Series) by Brooke Hartzog (1999) * ''A Triceratops Hunt In Pioneer Wyoming: The Journals of Barnum Brown & J.P. Sams: The University of Kansas Expedition of 1895'' (2004) * ''Barnum Brown: The Man Who Discovered Tyrannosaurus Rex'' by Lowell Dingus and Mark A. Norell (2010)

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Barnum American paleontologists American taxonomists 1873 births 1963 deaths Hell Creek Formation Paleozoologists People associated with the American Museum of Natural History People from Osage County, Kansas Scientists from Kansas 20th-century American zoologists