Walcott, Charles Doolittle

Walcott, Charles Doolittle

(1850–1927) geologist, paleontologist; born in New York Mills, N.Y. He worked for the U.S. Geological Survey (1879–1907, director 1894–1907) and was secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1907–27). Walcott's voluminous publications on trilobites, brachiopods, fossil jellyfish and western fossils established him as a leading authority on Cambrian rocks and fossils. His discovery of fossilized soft-bodied organisms in British Columbia (1909) ranks among the greatest ever fossil finds.