Roland Thaxter Bird (December 29, 1899 – January 24, 1978) was an American palaeontologist. He is best known for his discovery of fossil trackways, including the first scientifically documentedsauropod tracks, in theGlen Rose Formation near thePaluxy River in Texas, an area later designated theDinosaur Valley State Park,[1] and for his work with theAmerican Museum of Natural History.[2]
Bird was born on December 29, 1899, inRye, New York. When he was 14, a respiratory condition forced him to drop out of high school, and after his mother died oftuberculosis, a doctor advised him to move to his uncle's farm.[3] In the 1920s and 1930s, he struggled financially due to theGreat Depression and traveled throughout the United States on aHarley-Davidson motorcycle working odd jobs, including as a cowboy in Florida.
Bird discovered one of his first fossils, the skull of an amphibian, in 1932 while camping in Arizona. He sent the skull to his father, an amateurentomologist, who passed it along toBarnum Brown, then a curator ofvertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. The specimen was a previously undiscovered genus and species, which would later be namedStanocephalosaurus birdi, and the discovery led to Bird's employment at the Museum in 1934, where he worked as a fossil collector for Brown. Bird first learned of possible dinosaur tracks in the area ofGlen Rose, Texas, in 1938 from locals inGallup, New Mexico,[4][5] and in 1940 he worked alongside crews from theWorks Progress Administration to excavate dozens ofsauropod and theropod tracks from the Paluxy River Basin.[5][6] Parts of the excavated trackway were sent to theTexas Memorial Museum, as well as the AMNH.[7]
Thunder in his Footsteps by R.T. Bird in Natural History at theInternet Archive
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