Marion Charles Bonner (1911–1992), based for most of his life in Leoti, Kansas, was an American field paleontologist who discovered and collected hundreds of fossils, primarily from the Niobrara Cretaceous Smoky Hill chalk outcroppings in Logan, Scott, and Gove counties of western Kansas.
Largely self-taught, he frequently collaborated with museum paleontologists, including George F. Sternberg, at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, and Shelton P. Applegate, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.
[1] Notable specimens include a nearly complete short-necked plesiosaur,[2] Dolichorhynchops osborni; three new species of invertebrates -- Pecten bonneri[3] (bivalve mollusk described in 1968), Niobrarateuthis bonneri[4] (squid described in 1957), and Enchoteuthus melanae[5] (squid described in 1968).
A new fish genus occupying the bottom-feeding niche in the Niobrara Cretaceous, called Bonnerichthys gladius, was described[6] 18 years after Bonner’s death.
[7] Other notable finds from the Kansas Cretaceous include the most complete Hesperornis regalis specimen (Sternberg Museum, Hays, Kansas) and the most complete Platecarpus mosasaur[8] (Natural History Museum of Los Angeles - LACM specimen 128319).