Earl Douglass

Earl Douglass (October 28, 1862 – January 13, 1931) was an American paleontologist who discovered the dinosaur Apatosaurus, playing a central role in one of the most important fossil finds in North America.

[1][2][3] By 1922 Earl had unearthed and shipped more than 700,000 pounds of material including nearly 20 complete skeletons of Jurassic dinosaurs such as Diplodocus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus, Barosaurus, Camarasaurus and Brontosaurus.

[8] Douglass's early education was in the Medford public schools and the Pillsbury Academy in Owatonna, Minnesota, where he studied geology, paleontology, osteology, and mammalian anatomy.

[5][10] He wrote the famous lines in his diary: "At last in the top of the ledge where the softer overlying [sandstone] beds form a divide -- a kind of saddle, I saw eight of the tail bones of a Brontosaurus in exact position.

If we stopped to consider what a terrible lot of work there is to do we might fall over...”[12] The tail vertebrae connected to a nearly complete skeleton that was formally named Apatosaurus louisae, after Carnegie’s wife Louise.