History of Dinosaur Hunting

The Dinosaur Hunters

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Arthur Lakes Discovery

Charles H. Sternberg and sons

Charles Hazelius Sternberg, 1850 - 1943, was born in New York State, later moving to Iowa and Kansas. In 1880 he married Anne Reynolds, and together they had 3 sons

  • George  (1883 - 1969)
  • Charles Mortram (1885 - 1981)
  • Levi  (1894 - 1976)

Sternberg was a farmer with a keen interest in fossils and vertebrate palaeontology. He wrote 2 books

  • Life of a Fossil Hunter
  • Hunting Dinosaurs

He collected dinosaurs with Cope in the 1870s, and then worked freelance, selling the specimens that he found. Together with his sons he formed something of a family dynasty of dinosaur hunters, collecting very many high quality specimens.>

In 1908 Charles and his sons found the 'Trachodon mummy', in Converse County, Wyoming.  In 1912 Sternberg concentrated on the Drumheller / Red Deer River region of Alberta to hunt fossils for the Geological Survey of Canada and the British Museum, in (friendly) competition with Barnum Brown - the 'Second Great Dinosaur Rush'.

Charles Mortram Sternberg joined his father, along with his brothers, in the Canada expedition, and worked for the Geological Survey of Canada as a palaeontologist and biostratigrapher. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1949, and he helped to set up the Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta in 1957/58.