Wann Langston, Jr.

Wann Langston, Jr. (born 1921) is an American paleontologist and professor (now retired) at the University of Texas at Austin. He has worked on a number of different reptiles and amphibians in his long career, beginning with the 1950 description (with J. Willis Stovall) of the theropod dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus. Langston was hired by the National Museum of Canada in 1954 to replace Charles M. Sternberg, and worked in western Canada until 1962. One of his major finds, with Loris Russell, was the rediscovery of Sternberg's Scabby Butte Pachyrhinosaurus bonebed.^[1] Langston, along with a small team of fieldworkers, excavated the Scabby Butte bonebed in 1957, securing several skulls and several hundred bones there. He then went on in 1969 to the University of Texas, becoming the second director of the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory, where he worked on many projects, including work on Cretaceous vertebrates from Big Bend National Park. Finds that he and his students worked on include the giant pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus and a variety of Permian and Mesozoic reptiles. He retired in 1986, but has continued to be active in the field.^[2] In 2007, Langston was the twentieth recipient of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's A. S. Romer-G. G. Simpson Medal, the highest honor of the society.^[3]

Animals named by Langston include Acrocanthosaurus (1950), the hadrosaurid dinosaur Lophorhothon (1960), and the microsaur Carrolla (1986); the mesoeucrocodylian genus Langstonia, crocodilian species Akanthosuchus langstoni, theropod species Saurornitholestes langstoni, and pachycephalosaur species Texacephale langstoni were named for him.

Selected publications

• Stovall, J.W., & W. Langston, Jr. 1950. Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, a new genus and species of Lower Cretaceous Theropoda from Oklahoma. American Midland Naturalist 43(4):686-728.
• Langston, Jr., W. 1952. The first embolomerous amphibians from New Mexico. Journal of Geology 61(1):68-71.
• Langston, Jr., W., & J.W. Durham. 1955. A sauropod dinosaur from Colombia. Journal of Paleontology 29(6):1047-1051.
• Langston, Jr., W. 1959. Anchiceratops from the Oldman Formation of Alberta. National Museum of Canada Natural History Papers 3:1-11.
• Langston, Jr., W. 1960. The vertebrate fauna of the Selma Formation of Alabama. Part VI. The dinosaurs. Fieldiana: Geology Memoirs 3(6):315-361.
• Langston, Jr., W. 1967. The thick-headed ceratopsian dinosaur Pachyrhinosaurus (Reptilia: Ornithischia), from the Edmonton Formation near Drumheller, Canada. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 4:171-186.
• Langston, Jr., W. 1974. Nonmammalian Comanchean tetrapods. Geoscience and Man 8:77-102.
• Langston, Jr., W. 1975. The ceratopsian dinosaurs and associated lower vertebrates from the St. Mary River Formation (Maestrichtian) at Scabby Butte, southern Alberta. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 12:1576-1608.
• Langston, Jr., W. 1976. A late Cretaceous vertebrate fauna from the St. Mary River Formation in western Canada. in Churcher, C.S. (ed.): Athlon. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 114-133.
• Langston, Jr., W. 1986. Carrolla craddocki; a new genus and species of microsaur from the Lower Permian of Texas. The Pearce-Sellards series (43)1-20.

References