Marsh, OTHNIEL CHARLES

Marsh, OTHNIEL CHARLES, palæontologist, was born at Lockport, New York, 29th October 1831, graduated at Yale in 1860, and studied zoology, geology, and mineralogy for two years further at New Haven, and for other three years in Germany. He became the first professor of Palæontology at Yale in 1866, and thenceforward devoted himself to the investigation of extinct American vertebrates, of which in various expeditions to the Rocky Mountains he has discovered over a thousand new species, some representing wholly new orders. They include a new sub-class of odontornithes, a new order of pterodactyles (pteranodontia), the tillodontia and dinocerata, fossil monkeys from the Eocene of Wyoming, and several new families of Dinosauria (q.v.). Professor Marsh has described many of his discoveries in the American Journal of Science, and has issued a series of valuable monographs (published by government) on Odontornithes (1880), Dinocerata (1884); Sauropoda (1888), &c. He was LL.D. of Harvard, Ph.D. of Heidelberg, and in 1877 received the Bigsby medal of the Geological Society, London. He died 18th March 1899.