Samuel Paul Welles (November 9, 1909 – August 6, 1997) was an American palaeontologist. Welles was a research associate at the Museum of Palaeontology,

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. He took part in excavations at the

Placerias ''Placerias'' (meaning 'broad body') is an extinct genus of dicynodonts that lived during the Carnian to the Norian age of the Triassic Period (geology), Period (230–215 million years ago). ''Placerias'' belongs to a group of dicynodonts called ...

Quarry in 1930 and the ''

Shonisaurus ''Shonisaurus'' is a genus of very large ichthyosaurs. At least 37 incomplete fossil specimens of the type species, ''Shonisaurus popularis'', have been found in the Luning Formation of Nevada, USA. This formation dates to the late Carnian-earl ...

'' discoveries of 1954 and later, in what is now the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. He accumulated an extensive collection of fossils of marine reptiles, amphibians, and fish, as well as describing the dinosaur ''

Dilophosaurus ''Dilophosaurus'' ( ) is a genus of theropod dinosaurs that lived in what is now North America during the Early Jurassic, about 186 million years ago. Three skeletons were discovered in northern Arizona in 1940, and the two best preserv ...

'' in 1954 and the

elasmosaur Elasmosauridae, often called elasmosaurs or elasmosaurids, is an extinct family (biology), family of plesiosaurs that lived from the Hauterivian Stage (stratigraphy), stage of the Early Cretaceous to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceou ...

'' Fresnosaurus'' in 1943.

References

American paleontologists 1909 births 1997 deaths University of California, Berkeley staff Scientists from California People from Gloucester, Massachusetts 20th-century American scientists Presidents of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology {{Paleontologist-stub