Earl Douglass
Earl Douglass was born in 1862 in Medford, Minnesota. Although Douglass did not begin collecting fossils in earnest until in his early 30s, his interest in the sciences, especially geology, dated to his boyhood. As a young man, he spent several years teaching at schools in Minnesota, South Dakota, and Montana. Between 1893 and 1902, he earned a bachelor's and master's degree and began work on a Ph.D. In 1902, Douglass joined the paleontology department at the Carnegie Museum.
Douglass arrived in Utah in late July 1909 and began his fossil search along the Duchesne River. On August 17, Douglass moved his search to a new area with thick, hard sandstone beds. There he found what he was looking for: "At last, in the top of the ledge where the softer overlying beds form a divide, a kind of saddle, I saw eight of the tail bones of [an Apatosaurus] in exact position. It was a beautiful sight." Douglass began to excavate the bones. As he worked, he found fossils from other dinosaurs mixed with the Apatosaurus skeleton. This was the beginning of the Carnegie Quarry.
The bones Douglass found that summer day turned out to be part of the most complete Apatosaurus skeleton ever discovered. By 1915, the Apatosaurus skeleton-having been excavated, shipped, prepared and mounted-stood in the Dinosaur Hall at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The Apatosaurus is still displayed at the museum today.
Between 1909 and 1924, Douglass managed the work at the quarry. For 13 years, the Carnegie Museum funded the excavations and, as the ancient bones were unearthed, Douglass and his crew shipped them east to Pittsburgh. During that period, more than 700,000 tons of material was sent from Utah to Pittsburgh. In 1922, the Carnegie Museum determined that it had obtained sufficient fossil material and relinquished its claim to operate the quarry.
Earl Douglass, who died in 1931, played a central role in one of the most important fossil finds in North America. The "beautiful sight" Douglass saw on August 17, 1909, turned out to be one of the most productive Jurassic era quarries ever found.
