Even now many researchers continue to prospect and probe Hell Creek’s rugged exposures for clues to the dinosaurs’ demise. In the early 1980s we helped collect rock samples from the site, which were then analyzed to identify the iridium-rich clay layer that is now understood as the fallout from the impact of a comet or asteroid. Many scientists believe this collision caused the extinction of most dinosaurs, although some still argue that immense volcanic eruptions in India may also have played a role.
Brown helped establish our contemporary view that not all dinosaurs are extinct--some of them fly about today in our backyards.
Ironically, Brown also gathered key fossil evidence establishing that, in reality, not all dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous. During the 1930s, in the badlands of southern Montana’s Crow Indian Reservation, Brown discovered a diminutive carnivorous dinosaur now named Deinonychus. Because skeletons of such small carnivores were extremely rare, he immediately recognized its importance and began describing it in a scientific paper. Brown’s illustrations indicate that he clearly comprehended this animal’s birdlike characteristics. He never finished his study, however, and until 1960 the specimen languished in a drawer labeled Daptosaurus, the name he intended to give the new animal.
A student named John Ostrom picked up where Brown left off, renaming the specimen and rejuvenating the century-old debate about the evolutionary origin of birds. Subsequent research led to the radical but now widely accepted conclusion that birds are, in fact, the only living descendants of dinosaurs. Thus Brown helped establish our contemporary view that not all dinosaurs are extinct—some fly about in our backyards.
Brown’s succession of exotic discoveries made him one of the
greatest scientific celebrities of his day. The public nicknamed him
“Mr. Bones,” and one writer noted that “wherever Brown went on his
expeditions in the American West . . . he was feted by the local
populace. Droves of people would meet his train and vie for the honor
of driving him from the station to town.” Museum archives reveal that
Brown’s zest for geologic exploration inspired a second, clandestine
life. From early on Brown’s expeditions for fossils had served as a
smoke screen for occasional sojourns as an intelligence agent and
corporate spy. During both world wars he funneled geologic knowledge
gleaned from his fossil-hunting expeditions to the United States
government. He occasionally confided in museum colleagues, as in a 1921
letter to paleontologist W. D. Matthew stating that he had “an exciting
time in Turkey, and secured much desired data for the State Department.”
In 1942 Brown and his colleagues compared the skull
of Deinosuchus, a
giant 70-million-year-old crocodile
they found at Big Bend, Texas, with
the smaller skull
of a modern crocodile.
In 1941 the American government contacted museums to find out where their curators had done fieldwork in order to harvest information about remote and strategically vital areas. Although Brown was about to retire, he happily obliged, citing his travels to Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Patagonia, France, England, Turkey, Greece, Ethiopia, Egypt, Somalia, Arabia, India, and Burma. He also volunteered for service and was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of today’s CIA, where he used his knowledge of Samos and the Aegean Islands to help plan one of the potential invasion routes into Europe. From 1943 to 1945 he was transferred to the Bureau of Economic Warfare, where his duties included “interpreting aerial photographs to detect camouflage in areas of Africa, India, Burma, and the Mediterranean Islands” as well as conducting an aerial reconnaissance of oil fields in Alberta, where he had earlier prospected for petroleum on the Duke of Windsor’s large ranch.
Because of his passion for both geology and paleontology, Brown also forged close ties with oil and mining companies. Part of the industry’s appeal was financial; he charged a consulting fee of $50 per day, almost $800 in today’s currency. These contacts could also be lucrative sources of fossil-hunting cash. In 1934, with museum funds for fieldwork in short supply, Brown approached officials of the Sinclair Oil Corporation in search of financial support. The company’s president became so enamored of Brown and his work that he personally backed Brown’s expedition to northern Wyoming, where he discovered the famous Jurassic dinosaur graveyard named Howe Quarry. To this day the Sinclair logo features an image of Diplodocus in deference to this partnership.
Brown’s expeditions for fossils served as a smoke screen for sojourns as an intelligence agent and corporate spy
Brown’s oil company contacts were extensive. In 1920 he quite likely fled a jilted lover’s lawsuit by skedaddling for Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) under the banner of the Anglo American Oil Company, an offshoot of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. His mentor, Henry Osborn, was supportive of such ventures because Brown kept his keen eyes peeled for fossils while prospecting for oil. In this way Osborn reaped the fruits of Brown’s labors while the oil company paid for them. Brown’s letters—in which he invariably addresses his supervisor as “my dear Professor Osborn”—maintain the careful guise of an eccentric fossil hunter, but they also contain carefully worded notes about both oil prospects and the activities of European diplomats, military personnel, and businessmen. Those notes also contain telling details about his targets’ wives and daughters.
Brown was quite the roué, as the museum’s archives reveal. From 1920 through 1924, his global search for fossils took him not only to Ethiopia but also to India, Indochina, and back through the Mediterranean. His correspondence from the period suggests that this marathon was in part an effort to escape the spurned woman’s legal suit against him. Upon hearing about the case, Brown anxiously wrote to his supervisors to assess the potential damage. “I’m at a loss to know how my standing at the Museum has been affected by this blackmail case and whether I shall be wanted there again,” he wrote on December 20, 1919, from Okmulgee, Oklahoma. “It seems to me best to settle the business in or out of court before I come [back] to the Museum. . . . I know what a lot of gossips there are there. . . . It is purely blackmail and I doubt if the woman would dare go to court, and yet you know how innocent parties can be humiliated . . . in such a case.”
