Elmer Riggs
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Elmer Samuel Riggs (January 23, 1869 – March 25, 1963) was an American
paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...
known for his work with the
Field Museum of Natural History The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educationa ...
in
Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
,
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
.


Biography

He was born in
Trafalgar Trafalgar most often refers to: * The Battle of Trafalgar (1805), fought near Cape Trafalgar, Spain * Trafalgar Square, a public space and tourist attraction in London, England Trafalgar may also refer to: Places * Cape Trafalgar, a headland in ...
,
Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...
, and moved with his family to
Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...
at a young age. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from 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 ...
and then worked with 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 ...
. In May 1898 he joined the staff of the Field Museum (then the Field Columbian Museum) as that museum's first paleontologist. Though he was a specialist in fossil mammals, the Field Museum hired him in part to secure dinosaurs for exhibit. In the summer of 1898 he began with a field season in the Oligocene White River beds of South Dakota and Nebraska working under his department chairman, Oliver Farrington, a meteoriticist. Riggs demonstrated a clear facility for fieldwork and was given the opportunity to lead his own expeditions. He conducted his first Field Museum expedition in 1899 working in 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 ...
rocks of
Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...
and
Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...
and it was during this expedition that he discovered the first known specimen of '' Torvosaurus tanneri''.Hanson, Michael; Makovicky, Peter J. “A new specimen of ''Torvosaurus tanneri'' originally collected by Elmer Riggs”. ''Historical Biology, volume 26, issue 6 (2014).'' Pages 775-784. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08912963.2013.853056?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=ghbi20. After corresponding with an MD during the winter of 1899/1900 he headed to the Morrison Formation in Western Colorado during the summer of 1900. On July 4, 1900, Riggs' assistant, H. William Menke, found the first known skeleton of the giant
sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their b ...
dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...
'' Brachiosaurus altithorax'' from near Grand Junction, Colorado. At the end of the 1900 field season Riggs' found a specimen of ''Apatosaurus'' near Fruita, a few miles from the Brachiosaurus site. This specimen was excavated during the 1901 field season, and was put on display in 1908 at the Field Museum. From these specimens he named ''Brachiosaurus'' and Brachiosauridae, and presented evidence that ''
Apatosaurus ''Apatosaurus'' (; meaning "deceptive lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period. Othniel Charles Marsh described and named the first-known species, ''A. ajax'', in 1877, a ...
'' and ''
Brontosaurus ''Brontosaurus'' (; meaning "thunder lizard" from the Ancient Greek, Greek words , "thunder" and , "lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in present-day United States during the Late Jurassic period. It was describe ...
'' were the same genus of dinosaur. He also proposed that sauropods were terrestrial animals, based on their limb structure, but this was largely dismissed in favor of aquatic sauropods until the 1970s, when the idea was revived by
Robert Bakker Robert Thomas Bakker (born March 24, 1945) is an American paleontologist who helped reshape modern theories about dinosaurs, particularly by adding support to the theory that some dinosaurs were endothermic (warm-blooded). Along with his mentor ...
. A “little carnivorous dinosaur” fossil that he brought back from Alberta, Canada, in 1922 was determined after field jackets were removed in 1999, to be
Gorgosaurus ''Gorgosaurus'' ( ; ) is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period (Campanian), between about 76.5 and 75 million years ago. Fossil remains have been found in the Ca ...
, a
tyrannosaurid Tyrannosauridae (or tyrannosaurids, meaning "tyrant lizards") is a family of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs that comprises two subfamilies containing up to fifteen genera, including the eponymous ''Tyrannosaurus''. The exact number of genera ...
. Following these discoveries, he returned to fossil mammals, and worked throughout the western
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
and
South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...
until 1931. His collection of Argentinian and Bolivian fossil mammals secured on two multi-year expeditions to South America ( Captain Marshall Field Expeditions) are his greatest legacy, and are still studied intensively. One particularly notable find was the saber-toothed
marsupial Marsupials are a diverse group of mammals belonging to the infraclass Marsupialia. They are natively found in Australasia, Wallacea, and the Americas. One of marsupials' unique features is their reproductive strategy: the young are born in a r ...
'' Thylacosmilus'', which he found in
Late Miocene The Late Miocene (also known as Upper Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene epoch (geology), Epoch made up of two faunal stage, stages. The Tortonian and Messinian stages comprise the Late Miocene sub-epoch, which lasted from 11.63 Ma (million ye ...
-age rocks of
Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
in 1927 and named in 1933. He became the Curator of Paleontology at the Field Museum, and was employed by the museum until he retired in 1942. He was also sought after as a lecturer, and was still conducting speaking tours many years after retiring from the Field Museum. He died on March 25, 1963, in Sedan, Kansas, at the age of 94.


Notes


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Riggs, Elmer S. American paleontologists American taxonomists 01 1869 births 1963 deaths People associated with the American Museum of Natural History People associated with the Field Museum of Natural History People from Johnson County, Indiana People from Sedan, Kansas Scientists from Illinois 19th-century American zoologists 20th-century American zoologists Scientists from Kansas United States Department of Agriculture people