Othniel Charles Marsh

Born Oct. 29, 1831, in Lockport, N.Y.; died Mar. 18, 1899, in New Haven, Conn. American paleontologist.

Marsh graduated from Yale University and did graduate work in Berlin, Breslau (now Wroclaw), and Heidelberg. From 1866 he was a professor at Yale University and director of the geology and paleontology departments of the Peabody Museum, which was subsequently made part of Yale University. He collected and described rare Mesozoic fossil mammals (the genera Dryolestes and Priacodon), as well as pterodactyls, Ichthyornis and Hesperornis, mesosaurs, dinosaurs, and Dinocerata. He constructed a genealogical tree of the horse based on American materials. Marsh was the first to investigate the brain size of fossil mammals. He also created a stratigraphic scale for the American continental series of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic.