John Bell Hatcher
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Bell Hatcher (October 11, 1861 – July 3, 1904) was an American paleontologist and renowned fossil-hunter most famous for discovering Torosaurus. Born in Cooperstown, Illinois, Hatcher matriculated at Grinnell College in Iowa in the autumn of 1880, then transferred to Yale University, where he and his paleontological prowess were discovered by the great paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh, who invited him to a paleontological dig in Nebraska.
One of Hatcher's most celebrated enterprises was the series of expeditions to South America, chronicled in the Princeton University Expeditions to Patagonia, 1896-1899. It was often said that the resulting studies and the reports were in many ways the logical extension of Charles Darwin's natural history work earlier in that century. His book "Bone Hunters in Patagonia" proved to be an enduring work, and has remained in print as late as this writing (2006).
Hatcher died suddenly of Typhoid fever while completing a monograph on Ceratopsia begun by Marsh who had died a few years earlier. the work was finally completed by Richard Swann Lull in 1907.
[edit] External link
- Diplodocus Marsh, by J.B. Hatcher 1901 Its Osteology, Taxonomy, and Probable Habits, with a Restoration of the Skeleton. Memoirs of the Carnegie Museum, Volume 1, Number 1, 1901. Full text, Free to read.
