February 12 - Happy Birthday, Barnum Brown

Posted on February 12, 2022

Key Points

This is an update of my post published on February 12, 2011:

Last year I wrote about biologist Charles Darwin and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln – both of whom were hugely important – and both of whom where born on February 12, 1809.

Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln aren’t the only folks of note born on February 12. Some other birthdays include:

Christina Ricci – 1980 – actress

Judy Blume – 1938 – author

Bill Russell – 1934 – basketball legend

Anna Pavlova – 1881 – ballerina

Barnum Brown – 1873 – paleontologist

Speaking of Barnum Brown:

Quick, think of a dinosaur species name!

Even more quickly, name a carnivorous dinosaur!

If you are like most people, you probably thought of Tyrannosaurus rex after one or both of those prompts. This giant, fierce-looking meat-eater is one of the most recognizable and iconic dinosaurs and is part of modern popular culture. But you probably didn’t know the name of the guy who found the first T-rex skeletons…until now.

Born on this day in 1873, Barnum Brown was named after the circus promoter P.T. Barnum. He grew up to be a paleontologist—a scientist who collects and studies fossils. It was Brown who discovered the first two partial skeletons of Tyrannosaurus rex, although some teeth and fragments had been found earlier. (They were not enough of a specimen to be recognized and named as a separate species.)

At the time of his discoveries, Brown was the assistant curator of the American Museum of Natural History. He found the T- rex fossils in Wyoming (in 1900) and in Montana (in 1902). Tyrannosaurus rex lived all over the western portion of North America about 67 to 65.5 million years ago.

Brown collected many, many more fossils of dinosaurs and other creatures as well. He and his team used a flatboat to float down the Red Deer River in Canada in the middle 1910s, looking for promising-looking fossil sites. I find it funny that another group of fossil hunters, the Sternberg family, tried to outdo them by hunting for fossil sites on the same stretch of river in a rivalry that was apparently friendly!