He sparked a scientific controversy amongst geologists when he published about his discovery of fossilized footprints in Mount Carbon, Pennsylvania, that he incorrectly proposed were from a reptile from the Devonian Period over 360 million years old.

[1] He was close friends with Lardner Vanuxem as a child and the two developed an interest in geology and were exposed to the mineralogical collection of Adam Seybert.

[2] Lea was born a Quaker but forsook his faith's traditional pacifism and joined the 7th Company of the 24th Pennsylvania Militia during the War of 1812.

[7] In 1815, Lea joined the Academy of Natural Sciences and published his first paper on minerals found in the Philadelphia area in 1817.

He studied mollusks from the Ohio River submitted to the Academy of Natural Sciences by Major Stephen Harriman Long and shells collected by his brother near Cincinnati.

[1] In 1849, Lea presented a paper on fossilized footprints he discovered in red sandstone in Mount Carbon, Pennsylvania.

[10] Lea contended the tracks were reptilian and that due to the strata of rock where the footprints were found, they were from the Devonian Period between 360 and 408 million years old and constituted a new species that he named Sauropus primaevus.

The finding sparked a controversy in the geology community and the date of the fossil was challenged by Henry Darwin Rogers, the state geologist of Pennsylvania.

The brothers married the Jaudon sisters and their children also joined the family business, which ultimately became Lea & Febiger.

Henry Charles Lea (September 19, 1825 – October 24, 1909) was an American historian, civic reformer, and political activist in Philadelphia.