Map of primary fossil sites and localities where Hatcher and his field crews collected throughout the Rocky Mountain and Great Plains regions. Credit: Mick Ellison.
Map of primary fossil sites and localities where Hatcher and his field crews collected throughout Patagonia. Credit: Mick Ellison.
John Bell Hatcher as a child, posed with chair, circa 1866. Courtesy of John Hatcher.
John Bell Hatcher’s family circa 1890–1891: John Bell Hatcher (center back), his father John B. Hatcher and mother Margaret Columbia O’Neal (front row, second and fourth from left) along with John Bell’s siblings. Courtesy of John Hatcher.
John Bell Hatcher’s graduation photo. This portrait was probably taken circa 1884, when Hatcher graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. At the bottom of the photo is printed “Pach Bros. 935 B’dway, N.Y.” The Pach Brothers had a studio in New York and an outpost in New Haven that was apparently popular with Yale students and graduates. Courtesy of John Hatcher.
Portrait of John Bell Hatcher taken when he was working for O. C. Marsh of Yale and the U. S. Geological Survey between 1884 and 1892. Courtesy of the Archives; Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University; peabody.yale.edu.
Specimens of Teleoceras fossiger comprised the great majority of fossils collected by Hatcher from Charles H. Sternberg’s Rhino Quarry at Long Island, Kansas, during Hatcher’s first two field seasons under the supervision of O. C. Marsh in 1894 and 1895. Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History Archives.
Hatcher’s quarry map for the Long Island Rhino Quarry in Long Island, Kansas, showing the grids from which he collected and plotted individual fossils [VPAR.002371.tif]. Courtesy of the Vertebrate Paleontology Archives; Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University; peabody.yale.edu.
Hatcher’s sketch of fossils found and plotted in grid Sec. 48 of his map of the Long Island Rhino Quarry in Long Island, Kansas [VPAR.000630.tif]. Courtesy of the Vertebrate Paleontology Archives; Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University; peabody.yale.edu.
Eroding layers of sandstone and mudstone form a picturesque spire-pronged ridge just west of the Visitor Center in Badlands National Park, South Dakota—a region in which Hatcher and his crews collected extensively during his years with Marsh for Yale and the U. S. Geological Survey, as well as for Scott at Princeton and Holland at the Carnegie Museum.
Colorful yellow and pink exposures of the Chadron Formation underlie the more somber gray and brown layers of the Brule Formation along the eastern portion of Badlands Loop Road in Badlands National Park, South Dakota. Both photos by Lowell Dingus.
A 1919 photograph of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History’s skeletal mount of Megacerops coloradensis [USNM 4262], which was collected by Hatcher in 1887. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives and Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History.
Portrait of John Bell Hatcher and Anna Matilda Peterson Hatcher. Courtesy of Norman Hatcher.
Portrait of O. A. Peterson, John Bell Hatcher’s brother-in-law and Anna Matilda Peterson Hatcher’s brother. Courtesy of John Hatcher.
This view of outcrops along the drainage of Lance Creek illustrates the brownish gray exposures of sandstone that represent sand bars deposited in the river channels that meandered across the ancient floodplain on which Triceratops, Torosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus lived.
Lance formation two: This view of Lance Formation outcrops near Lance Creek illustrates the light gray exposures of sandstone that represent sand bars deposited in the channels, as well as the darker gray mudstones formed when the rivers overflowed their banks. Both photos by Lowell Dingus.
This side view of the imposing, horned dinosaur Triceratops prorsus [YPMVP.001822] clearly reveals the three horns for which this genus was named. Now on display in the Great Hall of Yale’s Peabody Museum, it was discovered and collected by Hatcher in 1889, in the Lance Formation along Lance Creek in Wyoming.
Experience coming face-to-face with Hatcher’s equally imposing skull of the horned dinosaur Torosaurus latus [YPMVP.001830], which he discovered in rock layers of the Lance Formation N of Lance Creek, Wyoming in 1891. Both photos courtesy of the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology; Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University; peabody.yale.edu.
This magnificent skeleton of Edmontosaurus annectens [YPM VPAR.000110] was collected by Hatcher in 1892 in the late Cretaceous sediments of the Lance Formation along Lance Creek north of Lusk, Wyoming. As displayed in the Great Hall of Yale’s Peabody Museum, it represents the first dinosaur mount to be depicted with its backbone held more or less horizontally with the tail extended out behind off the ground. Courtesy of the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology Archives; Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University; peabody.yale.edu. Scan by Alyson Heimer.
A portion of the lower jaw of Cimolestes incisus, a genus of Cretaceous mammals that Hatcher discovered in the Lance Formation; this specimen was collected from the same exposures at Lance Creek, Wyoming where Hatcher and his field crews collected. [UCMP 46874 DPS 122222]; photo by Dave Strauss, www.dscomposition.com.
Specimen of a toe bone from a horned or ceratopsian dinosaur, which Hatcher and his crews collected in 1892 at Lance Creek in Wyoming. The bone is still encased in the burlap jacket soaked in flour paste that was wrapped around the fossil bone to protect it during shipment back to Yale’s Peabody Museum. [YPM VP.060174]. Photograph by Lowell Dingus.
John Bell Hatcher on horseback during the Princeton Scientific Expeditions between 1893 and 1895. Courtesy of Princeton University Archives, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library.
Outcrops of the Uinta Formation along the Green River near Ouray, Utah, on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. Photographs by Lowell Dingus.
John Bell Hatcher and his crew of Princeton students crating fossils during the Princeton Scientific Expeditions between 1893 and 1895. Courtesy of Princeton University Archives, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library.
The mounted skeleton of Diplacodon, a relatively large Eocene mammal called a brontothere of which Hatcher found abundant fossil material in the Uinta Formation during the 1895 Princeton Scientific Expedition in Utah. Courtesy of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
The exposures of the Santa Cruz Formation near Lake Pueyrredon in Patagonia as photographed by Hatcher in 1898. Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History Vert. Paleo. Archives; Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University Archives.
The skull of the large herbivorous mammal named Astrapotherium magnum found by Hatcher near Guer Aike during his 1896–1897 Patagonian Expedition for Princeton [YPMVPPU.015332]. Courtesy of the Division of Vertebrate Paleontology; Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University; peabody.yale.edu.
The skull of Psilopterus australis, a three-foot-tall “terror bird” that was collected by O. A. Peterson and represented one of the primary carnivores in the fauna of the Santa Cruz Formation in Patagonia between 16–18 million years ago. Photograph by Lowell Dingus.
Hatcher’s image of his team and wagon mired in snow during the 1899 Patagonian Expedition for Princeton. Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History Vert. Paleo. Archives; Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University Archives.
John Bell Hatcher, portrait taken during his tenure at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History from 1900-1904. Courtesy of John Hatcher; Carnegie Museum of Natural History Archives.
Portrait of Hatcher’s staff in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History between 1900 and 1904: seated from left to right: Earl Douglass, Arthur S. Coggeshall, J. B. Hatcher, O. A. Peterson, and W. H. Utterback; standing from left to right: A. W. VanKirk, L. S. Coggeshall, Korman Boss, Sydney Prentice, and Charles W. Gilmore. Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Hatcher’s staff in the fossil preparation lab of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History between 1900 and 1904. Courtesy of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
The quarry site for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s skeleton of Diplodocus carnegii in the Morrison Formation exposed along Sheep Creek north of Como Bluff and Medicine Bow, Wyoming. Photograph by Lowell Dingus.
The world-renowned skeletal mount of Diplodocus carnegii illustrated and reconstructed by Hatcher and his staff, as it appeared in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History when it first opened to the public in 1907, roughly three years after Hatcher’s death. Courtesy of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Mounted cast skeleton of Diplodocus carnegii at the Museums für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany. Photograph © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).
Overview of exposures formed predominantly by the Brule and Chadron Formations taken along Badlands Loop Road in Badlands National Park, South Dakota. Photograph by Lowell Dingus.
O. A. Peterson’s Hoplophoneus primaevus [CM 567 and 943], with its elongated, saber-shaped canine teeth, represents one of the earliest saber-toothed cats known and actually belongs to the same scientific family as living lions, cheetahs, and domestic cats—the Felidae. Photograph by Lowell Dingus.
This skeleton of Daphoenus felinus [CM 492], collected by O. A. Peterson, represents a fine example of the relatively large carnivorous mammals called bear dogs, which belong to the family named Amphicyonidae.
Most of the fossils collected early on at the Agate Fossil Beds came from around the base of these two buttes—University Hill on the left, named in honor of the collecting crews from the University of Nebraska led by Erwin H. Barbour, and Carnegie Hill on the right, named in honor of O. A. Peterson and his Carnegie crew. Both photographs by Lowell Dingus.
An exhibit at Agate Fossil Beds National Monument south of Harrison, Nebraska, reveals O. A. Peterson’s discovery that solved the mystery of the corkscrew-shaped concretions called Daemonelix just before Hatcher died in 1904. Fossilized near the end of its burrow, the skeleton of an ancient beaver named Palaeocastor can be seen preserved in the burrow when it died.
This close up of the exhibit case demonstrates the position in which a Palaeocastor skeleton was found within the long, straight living chamber at the end of its corkscrew-shaped Daemonelix burrow.
Overview looking northeast at the Missouri River, with exposures of the Judith River Formation in the background, taken near where Montana State Road 236 crosses the river northwest of Winifred, Montana. All photographs by Lowell Dingus.
Steep exposures of the Judith River Formation just east of Montana State Road 236 shortly before it drops down off the bluff to cross the Missouri River northwest of Winifred, Montana. Photograph by Lowell Dingus.
Skull of Deinosuchus as reconstructed by the late Wann Langston of the University of Texas, Austin. Courtesy of Timothy Rowe.
John Bell and Anna Matilda Hatcher’s house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at 3200 Elsinore Square.
John Bell Hatcher and family relaxing on porch: (Left to Right) Anna Matilda Peterson Hatcher (Wife) seated on steps, Alice Hatcher (Daughter, small girl standing on top step), Aida Peterson (standing on top step behind Anna), three unidentified women (center behind railing), Harold Hatcher (son, seated on porch railing), O. A. Peterson (Anna Matilda’s brother and John Bell’s brother-in-law, standing second from right), John Bell Hatcher (seated on railing). Both images courtesy of John Hatcher.
John Bell Hatcher (back) and Wife Anna Matilda (front right) pictured with their three children: Alice (held by John Bell), Earl (middle), Harold (front middle). Friends of the family, “Mrs. Ortman and child,” are on the left. Courtesy of John Hatcher.
Portrait of Anna Matilda Peterson Hatcher. Courtesy of Norman Hatcher.
The touching headstone that marks the final resting place of John Bell Hatcher and his infant daughter Ruth is located on the grounds of the Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Photo by Lauren Buches.