Barnum Brown's Birthday

(1873-1963)

"Brown was always impeccably dressed, often wearing a tie and topcoat even in the field. He was a shrewd "horse trader" when it came to wheeling and dealing for fossil specimens."

-the AMNH

"Brown came from a hard-working farming family that eventually found prosperity — an experience echoed in his own career. In 1894, he began hunting fossils under the direction of paleontologist Samuel Wendell Williston. The following year, he worked with Williston again, to retrieve a Triceratops skull from Wyoming. Williston wrote of Brown:

In 1897, Brown began working at the American Museum of Natural History. The same year, he explored Upper Jurassic beds in Wyoming. At first, the quarry looked empty, but he kept looking. The quarry that initially seemed useless eventually yielded 65 tons of fossils."

- Strange Science