Born: 29 Oct 1831 (Lockport, New York) Died: 18 March 1899 (New Haven, Conn.)
OBITUARY
From: The Auk: Quarterly Journal of Ornithology, 1899, Vol XVI, No.2, p.211
by American Ornithologists' Union, Nuttall Ornithological Club
PROFESSOR OTHNIEL CHARLES MARSH, of Yale
University, died at New Haven, March 18, in the 68th year of his age.
He was born at Lockport, New York, in 1831, and was graduated at Yale
in 1860. He subsequently studied several years under leading
specialists in Europe, returning to New Haven in 1866, where he has
since occupied the chair of Paleontology.
He has long been recognized
throughout the world as one of the leading authorities in vertebrate
paleontology. His explorations in various parts of the West for fossil
vertebrates began in 1868, and in subsequent years he amassed the
immense collections which have been so long famous. The results of his
investigations have been published in a long series of papers and
memoirs, numbering nearly three hundred titles, covering a period of
more than twenty-five years.
His unrivalled collections of fossils, as
yet only partly worked up, he presented to Yale University with a
considerable endowment for carrying on and publishing the results of
further investigation of this great mass of material.
Professor Marsh
is well known to ornithologists for his numerous publications on fossil
North American birds, including his great quarto memoir,
'Odontornithes*: a Monograph of the Extinct Toothed Birds of North
America,' published in 1880. Probably five-sixths of the known extinct
South American birds have been described by Professor Marsh.
His
scientific work brought him many honors both at home and abroad. In
1878 he was chosen President of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and from 1883 to 1896 he was President of the
National Academy of Sciences.
[*Odontornithes
are a group of Mesozoic
birds having the jaws armed with teeth, as in most other vertebrates.
They have been divided into three orders: Odontolcae, Odontotormae, and
Saururae.]
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