Charles Albert Repenning (August 4, 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois – January 5, 2005 in Lakewood, Colorado)[2] was an American paleontologist and zoologist noted for his work on shrews, fossil rodents, modern pinnipeds and their extinct relatives, the Desmostylia.
He was a veteran of World War II, serving as an enlisted soldier in the 104th Infantry Division and spent time in a German prisoner-of-war camp.
After the war, Repenning attended the New Mexico School of Mines and worked for the United States Geological Survey in Holbrook, Arizona, where he mapped the Navajo Reservation; Menlo Park, California, where he studied at the University of California at Berkeley; and eventually Denver, Colorado, writing extensively on fossil and modern day mammals of many types, culminating in his work to create a bio-chronology based on microtine rodents.
He once found a guy sitting on the top of a hill in the desert who turned out to be a Civil War soldier who had desiccated rather than decayed.
Repenning would also prop up frozen animals that he was studying (e.g. an Emu) in the front yard for children to see as they walked to school in the morning.