This is Throwback Thursday #146. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc ...), please sent them to [email protected]. Thanks!
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Actually, it's a few days late as his birthday was January 23rd, 1869.
Elmer Riggs was an American paleontologist known for his work at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL. He was born in Trafalgar, Indiana. His family later moved to Kansas where he receive both bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Kansas. He joined the Field Museum in 1898 as a dinosaur hunter. He was responsible for finding multiple iconic dinosaurs still in the Field's collections, including a Torvosaurus tanneri, a Brachiosaurus altithorax, and an Apatosaurus (on display in Dinosaur Hall). A small tyrannosaur, named Elmer (see Throwback Thursday #20), was found in 1922 and later determined to be a Gorgosaurus. For more information, see his Wikipedia page.
He was born in Trafalgar, Indiana, and moved with his family to Kansas at a young age. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Kansas and then worked with the American Museum of Natural History. In May 1898 he joined the staff of the Field Museum (then the Field Columbian Museum) as that museum's first paleontologist.[2][3] Though he was a specialist in fossil mammals, the Field Museum hired him in part to secure dinosaurs for exhibit.
In the summer of 1898 he began with a field season in the Oligocene White River beds of South Dakota and Nebraska working under his department chairman, Oliver Farrington, a meteoriticist. Riggs demonstrated a clear facility for fieldwork and was given the opportunity to lead his own expeditions. He conducted his first Field Museum expedition in 1899 working in the Morrison Formation rocks of Wyoming and Colorado and it was during this expedition that he discovered the first known specimen of Torvosaurus tanneri.[4] After corresponding with an MD during the winter of 1899/1900 he headed to the Morrison Formation in Western Colorado during the summer of 1900. On July 4, 1900 Riggs' assistant, H. William Menke, found the first known skeleton of the giant sauropod dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax from near Grand Junction, Colorado. At the end of the 1900 field season Riggs' found a specimen of Apatosaurus near Fruita, a few miles from the Brachiosaurus site. This specimen was excavated during the 1901 field season, and was put on display in 1908 at the Field Museum.[1] From these specimens he named Brachiosaurus[5] and Brachiosauridae,[6] and presented evidence that Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus were the same genus of dinosaur.[a][7] He also proposed that sauropods were terrestrial animals, based on their limb structure,[6] but this was largely dismissed in favor of aquatic sauropods until the 1970s, when the idea was revived by Robert Bakker.[8]
A “little carnivorous dinosaur” fossil that he brought back from Alberta, Canada, in 1922 was determined after field jackets were removed in 1999, to be Gorgosaurus, a tyrannosaurid.[3]
Following these discoveries, he returned to fossil mammals, and worked throughout the western United States and South America until 1931. His collection of Argentinian and Bolivian fossil mammals secured on two multi-year expeditions to South America (Captain Marshall Field Expeditions) are his greatest legacy, and are still studied intensively. One particularly notable find was the saber-toothed marsupial Thylacosmilus, which he found in Late Miocene-age rocks of Argentina in 1927 and named in 1933.[2][9] He became the Curator of Paleontology at the Field Museum, and was employed by the museum until he retired in 1942. He was also sought after as a lecturer, and was still conducting speaking tours many years after retiring from the Field Museum. He died on March 25, 1963, in Sedan, Kansas, at the age of 94.[2]
Elmer Riggs (left) and Robt. Thorne (right) excavating Mammut ('southern mastodon') pelvis in situ, Argentina, 1926. Field Museum photo.
Elmer Riggs, the first curator of Fossil Mammals wearing cap and field laboratory assistant Harold W. Menke preparing Grand Junction Colorado fossils including the Brachiosaurus altithorax femur still in plaster jacket at left, Paleontology Laboratory, Field Columbian Museum, Geology specimen, December 1, 1894. (Photo by Charles Carpenter/Field Museum Library)
The Field's first paleontologist, Elmer Riggs, led an expedition to Grand Junction, Colorado in 1900. There, the team discovered the holotype of Brachiosaurus—*the* specimen by which the species is known. At the time, this was the largest dinosaur ever discovered, as shown by the mere human lying next to the enormous humerus.
Elmer Riggs on an expedition in Bolivia, 1927. The photo's description notes that this is a dig site for Lestodon, a group of extinct ground sloths. Field Museum Photo Archives
Geology preparator John Abbott, on the expedition with Riggs, wraps the dinosaur specimen in a plaster jacket, in preparation to move it out of the field. Alberta, Canada, 1922. Field Museum Photo Archives
