Vertebrate paleontologist. During a long career at the American Museum of Natural History, he was responsible for major fossil finds on three continents, including Velociraptor, a flesh-eating dinosaur made famous in the movie "Jurassic Park." The oldest of five children born to Charles H. Granger and Ada Haynes Granger, he left school at 17 to work at the museum as a taxidermist. He developed an interest in fossils while traveling with the museum's expeditions to the western United States in the 1890s. In 1897, he discovered the Bone Cabin Quarry site in Wyoming that yielded fossils of Allosaurus, Apatosaurus (Bronotsaurus), Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and other dinosaurs. He was part of the museum's 1907 expedition to Egypt that unearthed an impressive collection of Ice Age mammals. On the museum's 1921 expedition to China, he co-discovered the site where "Peking Man" was found. As chief paleontologist of the museum's famous expeditions to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia later in the decade, he supervised excavations that yielded Velociraptor, as well as Oviraptor, Protoceratops, the first whole dinosaur eggs and nests and the largest known land mammal, the rhinoceros Paraceratherium (Baluchitherium). Although he was hailed by his colleague George Gaylord Simpson as "the greatest collector of fossil vertebrates that ever lived," he had no formal college degree until Middlebury College awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1932. He married a cousin, Anna Deane Granger (1874-1952), in 1904. They had no children. He died of a heart attack while on a field expedition. His ashes were returned to his hometown and scattered on his mother's grave..
Vertebrate paleontologist. During a long career at the American Museum of Natural History, he was responsible for major fossil finds on three continents, including Velociraptor, a flesh-eating dinosaur made famous in the movie "Jurassic Park." The oldest of five children born to Charles H. Granger and Ada Haynes Granger, he left school at 17 to work at the museum as a taxidermist. He developed an interest in fossils while traveling with the museum's expeditions to the western United States in the 1890s. In 1897, he discovered the Bone Cabin Quarry site in Wyoming that yielded fossils of Allosaurus, Apatosaurus (Bronotsaurus), Diplodocus, Stegosaurus and other dinosaurs. He was part of the museum's 1907 expedition to Egypt that unearthed an impressive collection of Ice Age mammals. On the museum's 1921 expedition to China, he co-discovered the site where "Peking Man" was found. As chief paleontologist of the museum's famous expeditions to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia later in the decade, he supervised excavations that yielded Velociraptor, as well as Oviraptor, Protoceratops, the first whole dinosaur eggs and nests and the largest known land mammal, the rhinoceros Paraceratherium (Baluchitherium). Although he was hailed by his colleague George Gaylord Simpson as "the greatest collector of fossil vertebrates that ever lived," he had no formal college degree until Middlebury College awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1932. He married a cousin, Anna Deane Granger (1874-1952), in 1904. They had no children. He died of a heart attack while on a field expedition. His ashes were returned to his hometown and scattered on his mother's grave..
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Records on Ancestry
Advertisement
