Walter Granger

Walter Willis Granger (November 7, 1872 – September 6, 1941) was an American vertebrate paleontologist who participated in important fossil explorations in the United States, Egypt, China and Mongolia.

Early life and career

Born in Middletown Springs, Vermont, Granger was the first of five children born to Charles H. Granger, an insurance agent and veteran of the American Civil War, and Ada Byron Haynes Granger. Granger developed an early interest in taxidermy; and in 1890, at age 17, he moved to New York City and obtained a job working as a taxidermist with a friend of his father's at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Working in the field with the museum's expeditions in the American West in 1894 and 1895, Granger became interested in hunting fossils. In 1896, he joined the museum's Department of Vertebrate Paleontology as an assistant. In 1909, he became an assistant curator, then an associate curator in 1911. Following Granger's death, the museum renamed its Asiatic Hall of Fossils the "Walter Granger Memorial Hall."

Lophocion grangeri, a phenacodontid from the Paleocene of Wyoming, was named after Granger, who find the type specimen in 1912.