Horner [proxy]

This is the online presentation of a 125-day series of mini-profiles of famous and infamous Montanans. The series commemorates 125 years of publishing the Great Falls Tribune. The articles will appear on the Montana section front Mondays through Saturdays, and on the Sunday Life page on Sundays. Additions will appear here after appearing in the newspaper.

125TH ANNIVERSARY FEATURE

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Paleontologist unearths worldwide influence, Hollywood fame and support for Montana science

Jack Horner is the Regents Professor of Paleontology at Montana State University and curator of paleontology for the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, but his lectures, books and role as consultant to such films as “Jurassic Park” and “The Lost World” mean his influence spans the globe.

Back home, Horner has fought to keep Montana fossils in the state. Thanks to him, the Museum of the Rockies is a repository for thousands of fossils found on public lands in Montana.

Horner grew up in Shelby and discovered his first fossil at age 8 on his family’s former ranch near Dupuyer.

He attended the University of Montana twice, but, hindered by dyslexia, a reading disability, he never earned a degree.

The University of Montana gave him an honorary degree in 1986, the same year he won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”

Horner’s big discovery came in 1978, when Marion Brandvold, the owner of a tiny dinosaur museum in the Rocky Mountain Front town of Bynum, showed him the fossils of baby duckbill dinosaurs she kept in a coffee can — the first baby dinosaur bones ever found in the Western hemisphere.

Following up, Horner and a partner, Bob Makela, discovered 15 to 20 fossilized duckbill skeletons at the site. Egg Mountain, as it’s now called, has since yielded thousands more fossilized eggs, embryos and nests, leading Horner to formulate his ground-breaking theory linking dinosaurs to birds, postulating that dinosaurs cared for their young.

— Tribune staff

Horner demonstrates field dressing a bone fragment in 1998 to Adam Aronson, 10, of Los Angeles, left, and Blake Viola, 10, of Long Beach, Calif. Tribune photo by Stuart S. White.

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125TH ANNIVERSARY FEATURE

Paleontologist and curator Jack Horner is shown at the Museum of the Rockies in 2008. Photo by Stephen Hunts.

Horner shows a T. rex bone in 2007.
Tribune file photo.

Born: June 15, 1946, in Shelby; he lives in Bozeman.

Sources: Tribune files; Horner’s book “Dinosaur Lives”; interviews with Horner; Montana State University website. Tribune file photo.

Horner is shown at the Museum of the Rockies in 1999. File photo by Larry Beckner.

From left, Hell Creek Project volunteer Laura Loge of Dillon, Jack Horner, Bob Harmon and Nels Peterson secure a precious, prehistoric load wrapped in protective, white plaster jackets in 2001. Tribune file photo by Mark Downey.