Douglass, Earl, 1862-1931.

Earl Douglass was born in Medford, Minnesota, on October 18, 1862. His interest in the sciences, especially geology, began during his childhood. He enrolled at the University of South Dakota in 1888, and in 1893 received his B.S. from Iowa State College (University). Douglass continued his education and in 1900 received his M.S. in geology from the University of Montana. He soon began teaching at a series of primary schools throughout Montana before taking a teaching position at the University of Montana in 1899. The following year, he was granted a fellowship in geology at Princeton University. In 1902, Douglass was hired at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to complete research work in the field of Paleontology. Returning to a familiar region of the country, he began collecting fossils for the museum throughout Montana and the surrounding states. In the summer of 1909, Earl Douglass traveled to Utah to search for dinosaur skeletons. In August of 1909, he made an extraordinary discovery of an Apatosaurus fossil. Douglass soon began working full time with fossils in the Utah desert and the site was later designated as Dinosaur National Monument. Over the next 13 years Douglass, continued his work at the quarry as an employ of the Carnegie Museum. In 1923 and 1924, he provided assistance to the Smithsonian, U.S. National Museum, and the University of Utah in looking for dinosaur fossils. In 1924, after all excavation at the quarry ended, Douglass resigned from the Carnegie Museum. He spent the next two years at the University of Utah working to preparing fossils from the quarry for mounting. In 1905 he married Pearl C. Goelschius, and the couple had one son, Gawin Earl Douglass. His wife, and one year-old son, joined Douglass in Utah in September of 1909. The family set up a ranch not far from the dinosaur quarry, where they lived until 1923. He died on January 13, 1931.

Smithsonian Institution Archives Field Book Project: Person : Description : rid_240_pid_EACP237

Paleontologist.

From the description of Papers, 1884-1955. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 122497700

Earl Douglass, paleontologist, was born in Medford, Minnesota, 23 October 1862, the son of Fernando and Abigail Louisa Carpenter Douglass. He received his early education in the Medford schools and Pillsbury Academy in Owatonna, Minnesota. Subsequently he went to South Dakota, then Dakota, where he worked on a farm, taught school, and studied at the University of Dakota and the state agricultural college until 1890. During this period he made his first plant collection for an herbarium at the South Dakota Agricultural College.

In 1890 Earl Douglass went to Mexico on a botanical trip and after his return became assistant to Professor William Trelease at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in Saint Louis. There he studied systematic botany and plant histology at the Shaw School of Botany at Washington University. In 1892 he returned to the South Dakota Agricultural College. Suspended from the college in 1893 for publishing an article exposing corruption in the school, Douglass went to Iowa State College where he received his B.S. the same year.

During 1894-1900, Douglass conducted geological explorations in western Montana and taught school to pay expenses. There he gathered extensive collections of fossils. Of particular importance was his discovery of various tertiary beds containing extinct mammals and other vertebrates unknown to science. Earl Douglass received his M.S. degree at the University of Montana in 1899 and taught geology and physical geography there from 1899-1900.

From 1900-1902, Douglass held a fellowship in biology at Princeton University and studied geology, paleontology, osteology, and mammalian anatomy. In 1901 he accompanied a Princeton scientific expedition to the region of the Muscleshell River in Montana. During this expedition he discovered lower "eocene mammals in Ft. Union formation, thus settling a long continued dispute as to the age of these beds."

In 1902 Douglass became associated with the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and the museum purchased his extensive collection of fossil remains he collected from Montana and South Dakota. He continued his work in Montana for the museum during part of 1902, and then returned to Pittsburgh. His studies of his collection of fossil remains from Montana appeared in the publications the Annals and Memoirs of Carnegie Museum between 1903 and 1910.

In 1905 Douglass was sent to collect vertebrate and invertebrate fossils in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho and to obtain, if possible, data to solve certain geological problems in that region. On October 20 of that same year Earl Douglass married Pearl Charlotte Goetschius in Sheridan, Montana.

From 1907 to 1924 Douglass devoted himself to the exploration of the fossiliferous strata of the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah. In 1909 he discovered the world famous dinosaur quarry near Jensen, Utah. The quarry now forms the nucleus for the present Dinosaur National Monument. From the quarry Earl Douglass collected a large number of fossils, mostly vertebrates, many of which were new to science. The fossils included dinosaurs of many families, genera, and species.

Earl Douglass resigned his position with Carnegie Museum in 1924, and was employed by the University of Utah to excavate dinosaur bones for their museum. After the bones were transferred to Salt Lake City, Douglass worked two years completing the difficult preliminary work in preparing the bones for mounting. At this point, Earl Douglass's employment with the university was terminated, and the memory of his contributions to the institution virtually obliterated. From this time until his death, Douglass was a consulting geologist for companies engaged in developing oil fields in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. During this period he did notable research on oil, oil shale, asphalts, and other mineral deposits, and left much unpublished material on these subjects.

Douglass's interest in botany, his first love, never subsided, and during the last years of his life he devoted more time to paleo-botany than to any other phase of paleontology. He left a valuable collection of fossil plants, leaves, and flowers.

Earl Douglass's published writings included The Neocene Lake Beds of Western Montana (thesis for M.S. degree, published in 1900), The Gilsonite Holdings of the Gilson Asphaltum Company in Utah and Colorado (an extensive report for the Gilson Asphaltum Company, 1928-29), and a number of scientific papers published primarily in the Annals of the Carnegie Museum, Science, American Journal of Science, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, and Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History . Unfortunately, many of Douglass's discoveries were written up by other men and his contributions ignored because he was too busy to get to them.

William J. Holland of the Carnegie Museum, said of Douglass that "he added seventeen genera and eighty-three species to the ever growing list of fossil vertebrates. A great deal of his work related to the Merycoidodonts. He had mastered the entire literature relating to this interesting group. His collection, which was acquired by the Carnegie Museum, was rich in the remains of these animals. Important additions were made to it during his connection with the Museum, not only by himself, but by other members of the staff, and the Museum in consequence possesses one of the best assemblages in existence of material representing this long extinct group. Other additions which he made to our knowledge of the extinct mammals of North America were important. His careful observations upon the geology of the region where he collected are most valuable." There was not a good paleontological museum in the world that was not richer for Douglass's work.

On 31 January 1931, Earl Douglass died in Salt Lake City, Utah, age sixty-nine.

From the guide to the Earl Douglass papers, 1879-1953, (J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah)