Edwin H. Colbert

Colbert was born on September 28, 1905 in Clarinda, Iowa to Mary Adamson Colbert and George Harris Colbert, the youngest of their three sons. His father was a school superintendent in Page County, Iowa before being appointed as a mathematics professor at the newly established Northwest Missouri State University in 1906. Colbert grew up in Maryville, Missouri, where he worked as a paperboy and reporter for the town's Democrat-Forum newspaper. He also participated in the Boy Scouts, and became interested in fossils at an early age, collecting shells and corals from nearby creeks. == Early education ==

Colbert attended Maryville High School and graduated in 1923. After graduating, he briefly attended Northwest Missouri State University, but was disinterested in the school's teacher-training program. In the summers, he worked for the United States Forest Service, building trails at Arapaho National Forest. == 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. He also met Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi on travels to Calcutta. == Antarctica expedition and retirement ==

In 1968, Ralph Baillie, an Ohio State University student, came to Colbert with a fossil bone that he had discovered in the Transantarctic Mountains. Colbert assisted in identifying the amphibian bone, which was the first record of tetrapod life from Antarctica. After returning from the expedition in 1970, Colbert retired from the American Museum of Natural History and moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where he became the honorary curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. He continued to conduct research and author papers until his death on November 15, 2001. == Personal life ==

In 1930, Colbert met Margaret Matthew, the daughter of paleontologist Willam Diller Matthew, who had recently graduated from the California School of Arts and Crafts and taken a position as a staff artist at the AMNH. After she was assigned to illustrate Colbert's work on the Sivalik fossils, they began a romance and were married in 1933. 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. ==Works==

Colbert wrote more than 20 books and over 400 scientific articles. • 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. ==References==