Edwin Harris Colbert | |
|---|---|
 Colbert in the 1960s | |
| Born | (1905-09-28)September 28, 1905 |
| Died | 15 November 2001(2001-11-15) (aged 96) |
| Alma mater | University of Nebraska Columbia University (Ph.D., 1935) |
| Known for | Discovered complete skeletons ofCoelophysis |
| Awards | Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1935) Romer-Simpson Medal (1989) Hayden Memorial Geological Award (1997) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Paleontology Evolutionary Biology |
| Institutions | American Museum of Natural History Columbia University Museum of Northern Arizona |
Edwin Harris "Ned" Colbert[1] (September 28, 1905 – November 15, 2001)[2] was a distinguished Americanvertebratepaleontologist and prolific researcher and author.
Born inClarinda, Iowa, he grew up inMaryville, Missouri and graduated fromMaryville High School.[3][2] He received hisA.B. from theUniversity of Nebraska, then his Masters andPh.D. fromColumbia University, finishing in 1935. He marriedMargaret Matthew, daughter of the eminent paleontologistWilliam Diller Matthew, in 1933. She became a noted artist, illustrator, and sculptor who specialized in visualizing extinct species.
Among the positions Colbert held wasCurator of Vertebrate Paleontology at theAmerican Museum of Natural History for 40 years, andProfessor Emeritus of Vertebrate Paleontology atColumbia University. He was a protégé ofHenry Fairfield Osborn, and a foremost authority on theDinosauria.
For his thesis,Siwalik Mammals in the American Museum of Natural History, Colbert was awarded theDaniel Giraud Elliot Medal from theNational Academy of Sciences in 1935.[4] He described dozens of newtaxa and authored major systematic reviews, including the discovery of more than a dozen complete skeletons of a primitive small Triassic dinosaur,Coelophysis atGhost Ranch,New Mexico, in 1947 (one of the largest concentrations of dinosaur deposits ever recorded),[2] publication of their description, and a review ofceratopsian phylogeny.
His fieldwork inAntarctica in 1969 helped solidify the acceptance ofcontinental drift with the discovery of a 220-million-year-old fossil of aLystrosaurus.[5] He was also the first person to name theStaurikosaurus.[6] His popularity and his textbooks ondinosaurs,paleontology, andstratigraphy (withMarshall Kay) introduced a new generation of scientists and amateur enthusiasts to the subject. He was the recipient of numerous prizes and awards commemorating his many achievements in the field of science.
He retired from the AMNH in 1970 and became a curator of vertebrate paleontology at theMuseum of Northern Arizona inFlagstaff, Arizona. He died at his home in Flagstaff in 2001.[2]
Colbert was born on September 28, 1905 in Clarinda, Iowa to Mary Adamson Colbert and George Harris Colbert, the youngest of their three sons. His father was a school superintendent inPage County, Iowa before being appointed as a mathematics professor at the newly established Northwest Missouri State University in 1906.[7][8] Colbert grew up in Maryville, Missouri, where he worked as a paperboy and reporter for the town'sDemocrat-Forum newspaper.[3] He also participated in theBoy Scouts, and became interested in fossils at an early age, collecting shells and corals from nearby creeks.[7]
Colbert attended Maryville High School and graduated in 1923. After graduating, he briefly attended Northwest Missouri State University, but was disinterested in the school's teacher-training program. In the summers, he worked for theUnited States Forest Service, building trails atArapaho National Forest.[7] While visiting his brother Phil, an engineer at the University of Nebraska, Colbert visited theUniversity of Nebraska State Museum, which sparked his interest in paleontology and geology.[1] After an interview withErwin Barbour, the museum's director, Colbert transferred to the University of Nebraska in the fall of 1926, also taking on an assistantship at the museum.[7][9]
Colbert went on his first paleontological expedition with the University of Nebraska State Museum in 1928, where he collected Miocene fossil mammals in Nebraska.[7]
In 1928, Colbert graduated from the University of Nebraska with his bachelor's degree. After being rejected from graduate programs at theUniversity of California, Berkeley andYale University, he moved toNew York City in 1929 to begin studying at Columbia University.[1][7] Through Columbia's paleontology program, Colbert worked at the American Museum of Natural History. He studied underWilliam King Gregory, and worked as a research assistant for Henry Fairfield Osborn until Osborn's death in 1935. As Osborn's protégé, he studied the evolution of elephants, focusing on their teeth. Colbert expanded his research focus in his Ph.D. thesis to include antelopes, pigs, and giraffes that had been collected from theSivalik Hills byBarnum Brown. He completed his Ph.D. in 1935, and received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal for his work.
In 1933, Colbert was appointed as an assistant curator at the AMNH, where he began a research program focused on the evolution of mammals, studying specimens fromBurma andMongolia. In 1938, he traveled to theAgate Fossil Beds in Nebraska with a team of paleontologists from theAcademy of Natural Sciences. He began teaching at Columbia in the same year, and would go on to be appointed as a graduate professor.[10] His students and mentees at Columbia includedStephen J. Gould,John Ostrom, andDale Russell.[11][7] Colbert returned to Nebraska again to collect from the White River Badlands in 1941 with an AMNH expedition.
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After World War II began, Colbert served as a civilian air raid warden in Leonia, New Jersey, and was appointed as a curator-in-charge of amphibians and reptiles, replacing the recently retired Barnum Brown.[7] He began a working relationship withAlfred Sherwood Romer of Harvard University in order to familiarize himself with reptiles and amphibians. In 1945, he published his first book, intended for a lay audience,The Dinosaur Book: The Ruling Reptiles and Their Relatives.[2]
In 1946, Colbert traveled to Arizona looking forTriassic fossils; he intended to return to thePetrified Forest National Park the following year but was side-tracked in New Mexico, where he encountered exposed rocks of theChinle Formation atGhost Ranch.[9] Along with his assistant, George Whitaker, Colbert discovered one of the largest dinosaur deposits recorded after excavating over a dozen completeCoelophysis skeletons.[2][12] He continued researchingCoelophysis throughout his career, and published a monograph on its anatomy in 1989.[7] From 1949 to 1952, Colbert served as the editor ofEvolution, and later was the editor forCurator, a journal by theAmerican Association of Museums.[13] Throughout the 1940s and 1960s, he described several major fossil discoveries on the east coast, includingHypsognathus fenneri,Hadrosaurus minori, andIcarosaurus siefkeri, all found in New Jersey.[14]
In 1957, Colbert was elected to theNational Academy of Science, and as the president of theSociety for the Study of Evolution.[13] Colbert became chairman of the Vertebrate Paleontology department at the AMNH in 1958, succeedingGeorge Gaylord Simpson in the role. Starting in 1959, Colbert began going on international expeditions, traveling toSouth Africa and thePaleorrota Geopark in Brazil withLlewellyn Ivor Price.[15] His wife, Margaret, accompanied him, and together they collected Triassic fossils ofdicynodonts.[7] He also metPrasanta Chandra Mahalanobis,Jawaharlal Nehru, andIndira Gandhi on travels toCalcutta.
In 1968, Ralph Baillie, anOhio State University student, came to Colbert with a fossil bone that he had discovered in theTransantarctic Mountains.[16] Colbert assisted in identifying the amphibian bone, which was the first record oftetrapod life from Antarctica.[7] Just before retiring from the AMNH, Colbert traveled to Antarctica on the urging of theNational Science Foundation with an expedition team led by geologist David Elliot.[1] While working in theCoalsack Bluffs, their team discovered fossils, which Colbert identified asLystrosaurus bones. The discovery helped to prove the theory of continental drift, and was described as "one of the truly great fossil finds of all time" byLaurence M. Gould in theNew York Times.[17][7][2]
After returning from the expedition in 1970, Colbert retired from the American Museum of Natural History and moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where he became the honorary curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of Northern Arizona.[11] He continued to conduct research and author papers until his death on November 15, 2001.[2]
In 1930, Colbert met Margaret Matthew, the daughter of paleontologistWillam Diller Matthew, who had recently graduated from theCalifornia School of Arts and Crafts and taken a position as a staff artist at the AMNH. After she was assigned to illustrate Colbert's work on the Sivalik fossils, they began a romance and were married in 1933.[1] The couple had five sons together and settled inLeonia, New Jersey in 1947.[2][1]
While working at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico in the 1940s, Colbert met and befriended artistGeorgia O'Keeffe, who lived less than a mile from the excavation site and frequently painted the Chinle Formation.[7][12][18] In 2006,Sterling Nesbitt andMark Norell would name the speciesEffigia okeeffeae, whose fossil Colbert excavated, after O'Keeffe.[19]
In addition to the 1935 Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal, Colbert also received the Gold Medal for Scientific Achievement from the AMNH in 1970, theRomer-Simpson Medal from theSociety of Vertebrate Paleontology in 1989, and theHayden Memorial Geological Award in 1996.[11][7]
Colbert wrote more than 20 books and over 400 scientific articles.[20]
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