Frederic Brewster Loomis

Many fossils he uncovered during his extensive field work are still exhibited at Amherst's Beneski Museum of Natural History.

[4] Loomis's interest in paleontology dates from this period, when we spent his spare time collecting invertebrate fossils.

[1] In 1892 Loomis entered Amherst College, where he joined Phi Delta Theta.

In the fall of 1897 he entered the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich to study under Karl Alfred von Zittel.

Most notably, a 1911 expedition to Patagonia funded by Loomis's Amherst Class of 1896 yielded several remarkable fossils of the extinct mammal Pyrotherium.

He also explored areas of the Rocky Mountains, Florida and Maine, returning to Amherst with fossils of vertebrates including Eohippus, mastodons, and mammoths.

Professor Loomis securing firewood from a Malaspina bush in the central Patagonia during his trip in 1911.