Hotton taught
anatomy at the
University of Kansas from 1951 to 1959, before joining the staff of the
Smithsonian Institution in 1959, initially as an associate curator of vertebrate paleontology and later as the curator of vertebrate paleontology for the
National Museum of Natural History. In addition to administering collections at the National Museum, Hotton taught a course in
vertebrate paleontology at
George Washington University. Much of his work focused on
dicynodonts, a group of mammal-like reptiles that lived in the
Permian and
Triassic Periods. Hotton remained at the Smithsonian until his death aged 78, from colon cancer. Hotton was the author of numerous technical papers and many other books regarding paleontology. His more famous books include the widely praised
Dinosaurs (1963) and
The Evidence of Evolution (1968). A major paper on the
physiology of dinosaurs was "An Alternative to Dinosaur Endothermy: The Happy Wanderers" in
A Cold Look at the Warm Blooded Dinosaurs (D.K. Thomas and E.C. Olson. eds., 1980), in which he countered
Bob Bakker's theory of
endothermic, or "warm-blooded" dinosaurs with a theory that migration helped large cold-blooded dinosaurs maintain a constant body temperature. == References ==