Vertebrate Paleontology

The Princeton University Fossil Vertebrate Collection

The Princeton University Fossil Vertebrate Collection in the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology houses an important Paleocene mammal collection from Wyoming, a significant collection of lower vertebrates and tracks from the East Coast of the United States and Canada, and an unusual collection of Devonian fishes from Wyoming collected by Erling Dorf.

The collection is famous for several especially noteworthy specimens, including:

• Beautifully preserved sabre-toothed cat skulls,
• One of the earliest and most complete fossil bats,
• A Green River fish slab with one fish devouring the other,
• The original “baby” Maiasaura material
• Important collections of Miocene mammals from Patagonia and Oligocene mammals from Bolivia

History of the Princeton Collection

In 1985, the Yale Peabody Museum acquired Princeton University’s fossil vertebrate collection. Because it was so well established in the literature of vertebrate paleontology, it was decided to maintain it as a separate collection within the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The collection evolved from the efforts of H.F. Osborn, Francis Speir Jr., and W B. Scott, who, while in their senior year at Princeton, and inspired by a newspaper account of O.C. Marsh’s student expeditions into the American West, convinced some of their classmates to join them on a similar expedition to the Bridger Basin in 1877. The material they collected was deposited in the E.M. Museum of Geology and Archaeology at Princeton. In 1878 the results of this first expedition were published as the Palaeontological Report of the Princeton Scientific Expedition of 1877. This emphasis on fieldwork would continue until the collections were transferred to Yale University in 1985.

In 1891 Osborn left to take up positions at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History. Scott remained at Princeton throughout his lifetime. In 1888, while in Europe, he purchased a large collection of fossil mammals and birds from the Miocene of St. Gerand le Puy and the Phosphorites of Quercy. Although after 1893 he no longer actively led collecting expeditions, he remained the anchor of Princeton’s vertebrate paleontology program until his death in 1947, 17 years after his retirement.

In 1893, J.B. Hatcher arrived at Princeton from Yale. Between 1896 and 1899, he and O.A. Peterson undertook three expeditions to Patagonia, accompanied at different times by A.E. Colburn and Barnum Brown. The collections amassed were some of the most extensive of their kind. The results were published, at Hatcher’s suggestion, as Reports of the Princeton University Expedition to Patagonia 1896–1899. A facsimile of Hatcher’s vivid account of his experiences in Patagonia was reprinted in 1985 under the title Bone Hunters in Patagonia. Soon after his last Patagonian expedition Hatcher took a post at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

Princeton’s field programs took a new turn in 1901 when Earl Douglass, then of Montana State University, persuaded Professor Scott to send Marcus Farr and a small group of Princeton students to the Crazy Mountain area of Montana. Fortuitously for all involved, Albert Silberling was enlisted as guide and general handyman. It was at the end of this field season that the first discovery of Fort Union Paleocene mammals was made. Silberling and Farr led parties to the area in both 1902 and 1903, accumulating a small collection of these early mammals. However, the importance of this material was not recognized at the time, and a concerted effort by Princeton to collect more was not made until the 1920s. Silberling collected for other institutions for many years, only to return to Princeton in 1937. Nearly a dozen species of vertebrates and invertebrates bear the name silberlingi in his honor.

In 1904, W.J. Sinclair arrived at Princeton. He led collecting expeditions to the western United States, particularly the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming, the White River Badlands of South Dakota, and the Snake Creek region of Nebraska. He authored several sections of the Reports of the Princeton University Expedition to Patagonia, including those on the marsupials, the typotheres and, with M.S. Farr, the birds. In 1906, he became the first to document by microscopic studies the presence of volcanic ash in the Bridger beds.

During one of his expeditions to the Dakota badlands, Sinclair met Glenn L. Jepsen, who at the time was teaching English and taking courses at the South Dakota School of Mines. Sinclair persuaded Jepsen to apply to Princeton, where he completed his undergraduate degree in 1927 and continued on with Scott and Sinclair, receiving his Ph.D. in 1930. Jepsen was named the first incumbent of the Sinclair Professorship of Vertebrate Paleontology and served as Director of Princeton’s Natural History Museum from 1936 until his retirement in 1971. He is responsible for Princeton’s nearly unequaled collection of Paleocene mammals from Polecat Bench in Wyoming. His commitment to fieldwork continued throughout his career. In addition to his annual work at Polecat Bench, he collected hundreds of Triassic fishes, mostly coelacanths, from the excavation site of the Firestone Library at Princeton, and later worked on the Eocene Golden Valley fauna of North Dakota.

In 1957, Donald Baird arrived at Princeton “to help with the program of renovation of the fossil vertebrate museum,” and like so many of his predecessors, chose to remain there. Through his field collecting efforts, Princeton became a major repository of fossil lower vertebrates from the Linton Coal Mines in Ohio and the Newark Supergroup of the eastern U.S.

John R. Horner arrived in the mid-1970s and held the position of Assistant Curator until 1982, when he left to join the staff of the Museum of the Rockies. In the fall of 1978, Horner returned from a field season in Montana with the skull of a hadrosaur and bags of bones representing the partial skeletons of 15 “baby” dinosaurs from a nest. These remains belonged to an undescribed genus that was later named Maiasaura, the “good mother lizard.” His continuing work on “baby” dinosaurs and dinosaur behavior has been instrumental in shaping current views about dinosaurs.

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