Edwin H. Colbert

Edwin H. Colbert, a distinguished American vertebrate paleontologist, was born on September twenty-eighth, nineteen oh five, in Clarinda, Iowa. He spent his formative years in Maryville, Missouri, where he graduated from Maryville High School. Colbert pursued higher education at the University of Nebraska, earning his A.B. degree, before advancing to Columbia University for his Masters and Ph.D., which he completed in nineteen thirty-five.

In nineteen thirty-three, Colbert married Margaret Matthew, the daughter of renowned paleontologist William Diller Matthew. Margaret became a celebrated artist, illustrator, and sculptor, known for her work in visualizing extinct species. Colbert's career was marked by significant positions, including a remarkable forty-year tenure as Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History and later as Professor Emeritus of Vertebrate Paleontology at Columbia University.

A protégé of Henry Fairfield Osborn, Colbert emerged as a foremost authority on dinosaurs. His thesis, titled 'Siwalik Mammals in the American Museum of Natural History,' earned him the prestigious Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in nineteen thirty-five. Throughout his career, he described numerous new taxa and conducted major systematic reviews, including the discovery of over a dozen complete skeletons of the primitive Triassic dinosaur Coelophysis at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, in nineteen forty-seven.

Colbert's fieldwork in Antarctica in nineteen sixty-nine was pivotal in supporting the theory of continental drift, highlighted by the discovery of a two hundred twenty-million-year-old fossil of Lystrosaurus. He was also the first to name Staurikosaurus. His engaging textbooks on dinosaurs, paleontology, and stratigraphy, co-authored with Marshall Kay, inspired a new generation of scientists and enthusiasts alike. Colbert's contributions to science were recognized with numerous awards throughout his illustrious career.

After retiring from the American Museum of Natural History in nineteen seventy, he took on the role of curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, Arizona. Edwin H. Colbert passed away in his home in Flagstaff in two thousand one, leaving behind a rich legacy in the field of paleontology.