Edwin Harris "Ned" Colbert[1] (September 28, 1905 – November 15, 2001)[2] was a distinguished American vertebrate paleontologist and prolific researcher and author.

For his thesis, Siwalik Mammals in the American Museum of Natural History, Colbert was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1935.

[6] His popularity and his textbooks on dinosaurs, paleontology, and stratigraphy (with Marshall Kay) introduced a new generation of scientists and amateur enthusiasts to the subject.

His father was a school superintendent in Page County, Iowa before being appointed as a mathematics professor at the newly established Northwest Missouri State University in 1906.

Colbert expanded his research focus in his Ph.D. thesis to include antelopes, pigs, and giraffes that had been collected from the Sivalik Hills by Barnum Brown.

In 1933, Colbert was appointed as an assistant curator at the AMNH, where he began a research program focused on the evolution of mammals, studying specimens from Burma and Mongolia.

After World War II began, Colbert served as a civilian air raid warden in Leonia, New Jersey, and was appointed as a curator-in-charge of amphibians and reptiles, replacing the recently-retired Barnum Brown.

[2] In 1946, Colbert traveled to Arizona looking for Triassic fossils; he intended to return to the Petrified Forest National Park the following year but was side-tracked in New Mexico, where he encountered exposed rocks of the Chinle Formation at Ghost Ranch.

[9] Along with his assistant, George Whitaker, Colbert discovered one of the largest dinosaur deposits recorded after excavating over a dozen complete Coelophysis skeletons.

[13] Throughout the 1940s and 1960s, he described several major fossil discoveries on the east coast, including the Hypsognathus fenneri, the Hadrosaurus minori, and the Icarosaurus siefkeri, all found in New Jersey.

Starting in 1959, Colbert began going on international expeditions, traveling to South Africa and the Paleorrota Geopark in Brazil with Llewellyn Ivor Price.

[7] Just before retiring from the AMNH, Colbert traveled to Antarctica on the urging of the National Science Foundation with an expedition team led by geologist David Elliot.

[2][1] While working at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico in the 1940s, Colbert met and befriended artist Georgia O'Keefe, who lived less than a mile from the excavation site and frequently painted the Chinle Formation.