William Harlow Reed (9 June 1848 – 24 April 1915) was an American fossil collector and pioneer. He served as a curator at the Museum of Geology at the

University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyoming ...

, Laramie. He collected for a while for

Othniel Charles Marsh Othniel Charles Marsh (October 29, 1831 – March 18, 1899) was an American professor of Paleontology in Yale College and President of the National Academy of Sciences. He was one of the preeminent scientists in the field of paleontology. Among h ...

but left after clashing with rival collectors at the height of the

bone wars The Bone Wars, also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush, was a period of intense and ruthlessly competitive fossil hunting and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope (of the Acade ...

. Among his major finds was a near complete skeleton of a Brontosaurus (''Apatosaurus'') from

Como Bluff Como Bluff is a long ridge extending east–west, located between the towns of Rock River and Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The ridge is an anticline, formed as a result of compressional geological folding. Three geological formations, the Sundance, t ...

. Reed's quarry in Como Bluff is named after him.

Life and work

Reed was born near

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

where his father Fedelius was a cooper and millwright of Scottish origins. Reed and his family moved to Ohio in 1853 and then moved to Michigan in 1863. Reed sought to join the Union Army several times and at the end of the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

, he joined the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

to shovel snow but his skills at shooting were recognized, he was contracted to provide fresh meat for the railway construction workers. Reed married Florence Bovee in Michigan in 1870. He was sometimes involved in fighting duties and as guide for the US Army on account of his familiarity with Indian dialects. During his travels, he saw the paleontological finds made by Othneil Charles Marsh and his group in the 1870s. In 1874 Reed's wife died in childbirth and he took up a job at Wyoming. On March 7, 1877, Reed noticed bones and vertebrae while walking near Como Bluff. Along with William Edwards Carlin, he wrote to O.C. Marsh and there they found ''Apatosaurus grandis'' (now ''Camarasaurus grandis''). Reed and Carlin then began to collect for Marsh. In 1879 Reed was instructed by Marsh to destroy the fossil site to prevent rival collectors, principally

Edward Drinker Cope Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American zoologist, paleontologist, comparative anatomist, herpetologist, and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested ...

who had won over Carlin as his collector. In 1880, Reed married an Ohio school teacher, Anne E. Clark. In 1883, noting the problems with Marsh and the rivalry among collectors, he quit working on paleontological digs and began to ranch sheep along with

George Bird Grinnell George Bird Grinnell (September 20, 1849 – April 11, 1938) was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Grinnell was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in 1870 and a Ph.D. in 1880 ...

. When most of the sheep were killed in the winter of 1884, Reed went back to the fossil collection business as an independent collector. In 1894 he was hired by Wilbur Clinton Knight to help collect for the University of Wyoming in Laramie and in 1897 he became an assistant geologist and curator at the museum of the University of Wyoming. Reed continued to sell specimens to Marsh and this led to friction with Knight and Reed's resignation following his 1898 discovery of a specimen of '' Brontosaurus giganteus'' that was purchased by the Carnegie Museum and was hired his services. After two years of work, he quit the Carnegie Museum as he felt unrecognized. In 1903, following the death of Wilbur Knight, Reed was again offered a position at the University of Wyoming and he took up the position, now also including taking classes on geology. The lack of a formal training in science was a handicap and he was lost when it came to anatomy and matters of taxonomic description, leading to several mixed-up specimen mounts at the museum. These were removed by Samuel Howell Knight, William Clinton Knight's son who replaced Reed after his death. Reed died of dropsy, a generic description used in the past for heart failure.

References

External links

Dinosaur Hunters Of The Wild West—William Harlow Reed Papers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reed, William Harlow 1848 births 1915 deaths American paleontologists