Barnum Brown

Barnum Brown was an American paleontologist best known for discovering the first scientifically documented remains of Tyrannosaurus rex, unearthed in 1902 in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. Brown joined the American Museum of Natural History in 1896, working there for the rest of his long career and eventually rising to Associate Curator of the museum's Vertebrate Paleontology Department by 1910, while leading fossil-collecting expeditions across Wyoming, Montana, western Canada and abroad. In 1923, during an expedition to Burma, Brown collected fossil remains later identified in 1937 by colleague Edwin H. Colbert as Amphipithecus mogaungensis, at the time considered among the earliest known anthropoid primate fossils. Brown's decades of fieldwork made him one of the most prolific fossil hunters of his era, and his Tyrannosaurus rex discovery in particular remains one of the most famous single finds in the history of paleontology.