previous next

Marsh, Othniel Charles 1831-1899

Paleontologist; born in Lockport, N. Y., Oct. 29, 1831; graduated at Yale University in 1860. After taking a course of science in the Sheffield School, he went to Germany, where he devoted three years to the study of zoology, mineralogy, and geology. Returning to the United States, he was called to the chair of Paleontology at Yale University in 1866, which he retained till his death. In 1868 he made his first visit to the region of the Rocky Mountains, to study its inexhaustible fossil remains. Later he organized and conducted several scientific expeditions to that region. During 1882-99 he was vertebrate paleontologist for the United States geological survey. He discovered more than 1,000 new fossil vertebrates, more than half of which he classified and described. Among his more important finds were a sub-class of birds with teeth, which he named Odontornithes; two new classes of large mammals, the Tillodontia and Dinocerata; several new orders of dinosaurs, supposed to be the largest land animals yet discovered, etc. In 1877 he received the first Bigsby medal given by the Geological Society of London, and in 1898 the Cuvier prize of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1883-95 he was president of the National Academy of Sciences. He was a member of numerous scientific organizations. In 1898 he presented the collections of his lifetime to Yale University, and also gave his estate, having a supposed value of $150,000, to that institution. His publications include Odontornithes: a monograph on the extinct Toothed birds of North America; Dinocerata: a monograph of an extinct order of gigantic mammals; and The dinosaurs of North America. He died in New Haven, Conn., March 18, 1899.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)
hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Othniel Charles Marsh (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1899 AD (2)
1898 AD (2)
March 18th, 1899 AD (1)
1895 AD (1)
1883 AD (1)
1882 AD (1)
1877 AD (1)
1868 AD (1)
1866 AD (1)
1860 AD (1)
October 29th, 1831 AD (1)
1831 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: