Edwin H. Colbert

Edwin Harris "Ned" Colbert (September 28, 1905 – November 15, 2001) was a distinguished American vertebrate paleontologist and prolific researcher and author.

Born in Clarinda, Iowa, he grew up in Maryville, Missouri and graduated from Maryville High School. He described dozens of new taxa and authored major systematic reviews, including the discovery of more than a dozen complete skeletons of a primitive small Triassic dinosaur, Coelophysis at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, in 1947 (one of the largest concentrations of dinosaur deposits ever recorded), He was also the first person to name the Staurikosaurus. His popularity and his textbooks on dinosaurs, paleontology, and stratigraphy (with Marshall 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 the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, Arizona. He died at his home in Flagstaff in 2001. Colbert grew up in Maryville, Missouri, where he worked as a paperboy and reporter for the town's Democrat-Forum newspaper.

Paleontology and AMNH work Colbert went on his first paleontological expedition with the University of Nebraska State Museum in 1928, where he collected Miocene fossil mammals in Nebraska. His students and mentees at Columbia included Stephen J. Gould, John Ostrom, and Dale Russell. He continued researching Coelophysis throughout his career, and published a monograph on its anatomy in 1989. Throughout the 1940s and 1960s, he described several major fossil discoveries on the east coast, including Hypsognathus fenneri, Hadrosaurus minori, and Icarosaurus siefkeri, all found in New Jersey.

In 1957, Colbert was elected to the National Academy of Science, and as the president of the Society for the Study of Evolution. His wife, Margaret, accompanied him, and together they collected Triassic fossils of dicynodonts. Colbert assisted in identifying the amphibian bone, which was the first record of tetrapod life from Antarctica. In 2006, Sterling Nesbitt and Mark Norell would name the species Effigia okeeffeae, whose fossil Colbert excavated, after O'Keeffe.

Awards In addition to the 1935 Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal, Colbert also received the Gold Medal for Scientific Achievement from the AMNH in 1970, the Romer-Simpson Medal from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 1989, and the Hayden Memorial Geological Award in 1996. 1935: Siwalik Mammals in the American Museum of Natural History 1945: The Dinosaur Book: The Ruling Reptiles and Their Relatives (repub 1951) 1955: Colbert's Evolution of the Vertebrates: A History of the Backboned Animals Through Time (four more editions in 1969, 1980, 1991 & 2001; fifth edition with Eli C. Minkoff & Michael Morales) 1961: The World of Dinosaurs, illustrated by George Geygan (repub in 1977 as Dinosaur World) 1961: Dinosaurs: Their Discovery and Their World 1965: The Age of Reptiles, illustrated by Margaret Colbert (repub 1987) 1968: Men and Dinosaurs: The Search in Field and Laboratory (repub 1971) 1968: Millions of Years Ago: Prehistoric Life in North America, illustrated by Margaret Colbert 1973: Wandering Lands and Animals: The Story of Continental Drift and Animal Populations (repub 1985) 1977: The Year of the Dinosaur, illustrated by Margaret Colbert 1983: Dinosaurs: An Illustrated History. 1984: The Great Dinosaur Hunters and Their Discoveries. 1989: Digging into the Past: An Autobiography. 1995: The Little Dinosaurs of Ghost Ranch. 1980: Fossil-Hunter's Notebook: My Life with Dinosaurs and Other Friends, w/Elias Colbert.