Roland Thaxter Bird (December 29, 1899 – January 24, 1978) was an American palaeontologist. He is best known for his discovery of fossil trackways of the Paluxy River in Texas,Branch, G. (2006). Paluxy Footprints. In H. J. Birx (Ed.), ''Encyclopedia of Anthropology'' (Vol. 4, p. 1818). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference.
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American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

Early life

Bird was born on December 29, 1899, in

Rye, New York Rye is a coastal suburb of New York City in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is separate from the Town of Rye, which has more land area than the city. The City of Rye, formerly the Village of Rye, was part of the Town until it r ...

. When he was 14, a respiratory condition forced him to drop out of high school, and after his mother died from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

, he was advised by a doctor to move to his uncle's farm. In the 1920s and 1930s, he struggled financially due to the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

and traveling throughout the United States on a

Harley-Davidson Harley-Davidson, Inc. (H-D, or simply Harley) is an American motorcycle manufacturer headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1903, it is one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depressi ...

motorcycle working odd jobs, including as a cowboy in Florida.

Paleontology career

Bird discovered his first fossil, the skull of an amphibian, in 1932 while camping in the

Petrified Forest National Park Petrified Forest National Park is an American national park in Navajo County, Arizona, Navajo and Apache County, Arizona, Apache counties in northeastern Arizona. Named for its large deposits of petrified wood, the park covers about , encompassin ...

area. He sent the skull to his father, an amateur

entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...

, who passed it along to Barnum Brown, then a curator of

vertebrate paleontology Vertebrate paleontology is the subfield of paleontology that seeks to discover, through the study of fossilized remains, the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebrae or a notochord. It also tries to connect, by us ...

at the American Museum of Natural History. The specimen was a previously undiscovered genus and species, which would later be named Stanocephalosaurus birdi, and the discovery led to Bird's employment at the Museum in 1934, where he worked as a fossil collector for Brown. Bird first learned of possible dinosaur tracks in the area of

Glen Rose, Texas Glen Rose is a city in and the county seat of Somervell County, Texas, United States. As of the 2012 census estimate, the city population was 2,502. History 19th century The area was first settled in 1849 by Charles Barnard, who opened a tradin ...

, in 1938 from locals in Gallup New Mexico, and in 1940 he worked alongside crews from the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

to excavate dozens of

sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their bo ...

and theropod tracks from the Paluxy River Basin. Parts of the excavated trackway were sent to the

Texas Memorial Museum The Texas Memorial Museum, located on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, USA, was created during preparations for the Texas Centennial Exposition held in 1936. The museum's focus is on natural history, including pal ...

, as well as the AMNH.

Additional reading

Bones for Barnum Brown: Adventures of a Dinosaur Hunter, by R.T. Bird

References

American paleontologists 1889 births 1978 deaths People from Rye, New York {{US-scientist-stub