Biographies : O

O.

Osborn, Henry Fairfield, Sr. (1857–1935) American geologist, paleontologist, and scientific administrator, president of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. He assembled a great team of fossil hunters and preparators, which included Roy Chapman Andrews, considered the inspiration for the fictional archeologist Indiana Jones, and Charles R. Knight, who made murals of dinosaurs in their habitats and sculptures of the living creatures. A student of Edward Drinker Cope, he held the now rejected theory of orthogenesis, and is responsible for influential illustrations such as the evolution of the horse from tiny eohippus to the modern horse. Wrote a detailed mongraph on the Brontotheriidae (Titanotheres), which includes a similar illustration (evolution of the brontotheres). Discovered Tyrannosaurus rex and believed it stood upright, which is now known not to be the case. (MAK, Wikipedia)

Osmolska, Halszka, one of the most influential of paleontologists, she, like Teresa Maryanska, is an enterprising Pole whose work on dinosaurs extends back to the days of the "iron curtain." Osmolska's contributions to the field are extensive, and include recognizing the ceratopsian affinity of Psittacosauridae (with Maryanska, 1975), reviewing the osteology and phylogeny of the enigmatic troodonts (in Dodson et al 1990) and co-authoring The Dinosauria in 1990. Osmolska has furthermore contributed significantly to our understanding of both the morphology and evolution of the oviraptorosaurs. (EvoWiki)

Ostrom, John H., of Yale, was one of the most influential figures in 20th Century dinosaur paleontology. It is no exaggeration to say that he single-handedly resurrected the theropod origin of birds with his 1964 discovery of Deinonychus antirrhopus from the Early Cretaceous Cloverly Formation of Wyoming in 1964, and the subsequent description of this marvelous predator in a truly gorgeous 1969 monograph. Ostrom carried out the most extensive review of the Archaeopteryx material that perhaps has ever been executed, and was intimately involved with the discovery of two previously misidentified urvogel remains. It is Ostrom's work that the post-modernist consensus on theropod phylogeny and avian origins, is largely indebted to, a fact reflected in the 1999 symposium on those very subjects, held in honor of Ostrom. Moreover, Ostrom had a crucial influence on a generation of dinosaur paleontologists, including most notably, his former student Robert Bakker. In addition, Ostrom is largely responsible for the primacy of paleobiological thought in modern dinosaur paleontology. (EvoWiki)

Owen, Richard: (1804-1892) English biologist, anatomist and palaeontologist, best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria (meaning "Terrible Reptile" or "Fearfully Great Reptile"). Owen was a student of Cuvier, and shared with him a strong opposition to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. He reconstructed the skeletons of many extinct animals, even working on some of Darwin's specimens. He argued that God created new species by modifying a basic anatomical idea or archetype. Later he modified his own views to accept a kind of "divine" evolution. Owen is also known for overstating the differences between the human brain and those of other apes in his struggle to keep humans above the rest of the animal kingdom. In other respects though, Owen's approach to evolution anticipated the issues that have gained greater attention with evolutionary developmental biology. He was the driving force behind the establishment, in 1881, of the British Museum of Natural History in London. Bill Bryson argues that, "by making the Natural History Museum an institution for everyone, Owen transformed our expectations of what museums are for". (UCMP Understanding Evolution Glossary, Wikipedia)

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