The people behind the fossils

Mary Anning

1799–1847

The self-taught collector whose Jurassic Coast finds reshaped how the world understood deep time.

Barnum Brown

1873–1963

AMNH's legendary field collector, who found the first Tyrannosaurus rex ever recognized.

Roy Chapman Andrews

1884–1960

Led the Gobi Desert expeditions that found the first confirmed dinosaur eggs.

Sue Hendrickson

b. 1949

Found the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever recovered.

Paul Sereno

b. 1957

University of Chicago paleontologist who has named dinosaur species on four continents.

William Buckland

1784–1856

Oxford geologist whose 1824 description of Megalosaurus made it the first dinosaur ever formally named.

Gideon Mantell

1790–1852

Sussex physician whose fossil teeth became Iguanodon, one of the first three dinosaurs ever named.

Robert Bakker

b. 1945

Ostrom's student who took the warm-blooded-dinosaur argument to a mass audience with The Dinosaur Heresies.

Jack Horner

b. 1946

Discovered Maiasaura and the first solid evidence that dinosaurs cared for their young.

Jose Bonaparte

1928–2020

Self-taught collector who almost single-handedly established Argentina as a major dinosaur-fossil nation.

Philip Currie

b. 1949

Canadian paleontologist whose bonebed and feathered-dinosaur fieldwork helped found the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Nizar Ibrahim

1982–

Led the discovery that Spinosaurus was a semiaquatic hunter, overturning a century of assumptions about the largest predatory dinosaur known.

Hesham Sallam

1975–

Founded Egypt's first vertebrate paleontology research program and helped discover the first Egyptian dinosaur in nearly a century.

Rinchen Barsbold

1935–2025

Leading authority on Gobi Desert theropods whose comparative anatomy work supplied early evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

James Kitching

1922–2003

Self-taught South African fossil hunter whose Karoo collections became one of the world's great paleontological archives.

Louis Dollo

1857–1931

Belgian paleontologist who reconstructed the Bernissart Iguanodons and helped found the field of paleobiology.

Xu Xing

b. 1969

The paleontologist who has named more dinosaur species than anyone alive, and helped prove many were feathered.

Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska

1925–2015

Led Poland's Gobi Desert expeditions and became one of the 20th century's foremost Mesozoic mammal specialists.

Mary Schweitzer

Found soft tissue inside a T. rex thighbone, upending assumptions about what fossils can preserve.

John Ostrom

1928–2005

Yale paleontologist whose 1964 Deinonychus discovery sparked the "Dinosaur Renaissance" and the modern bird-dinosaur link.

Angela Milner

1947–2021

Co-described Baryonyx, the first fish-eating dinosaur ever found, and led the Natural History Museum's dinosaur research for two decades.

Aline Ghilardi

1986–

Brazilian paleontologist and science communicator who led the successful campaign to repatriate the Ubirajara jubatus fossil from Germany.

Philippe Taquet

1940–2025

French paleontologist who discovered Ouranosaurus in Niger and led both the French National Museum of Natural History and Academy of Sciences.

Ernst Stromer

1871–1952

German paleontologist who discovered Spinosaurus, then watched Nazi-era bombing raids destroy the only known skeleton.

Evgeny Maleev

1915–1966

Soviet paleontologist who named Tarbosaurus and pioneered Gobi Desert dinosaur research from Moscow.

Richard A. Thulborn

1940–2025

British-Australian paleontologist who uncovered the world's only known trace-fossil evidence of a dinosaur stampede.

Yoshitsugu Kobayashi

1971–

Japanese paleontologist who named Japan's national dinosaur, Kamuysaurus, and helped solve the decades-long mystery of Deinocheirus.

Ashok Sahni

1941–

Indian paleontologist who co-described Rajasaurus and helped establish India's place in dinosaur research.