With the establishment of the Peabody Museum in 1866, its growing vertebrate fossil collections at Yale became a hub for research on the history of life. This fueled intensive paleontological investigations in the late 19th century. Beyond the pioneering collecting by O.C. Marsh, significant contributions were made by “professional collectors” and “assistants” such as Erwin H. Barbour, David Baldwin, George Baur, Charles Emerson Beecher, Hugh Gibb, George Bird Grinnell, Oscar Harger, John Bell Hatcher, Marshall P. Felch, Arthur Lakes, Otto Meyer, Benjamin Mudge, O.A. Peterson, William Reed, George R. Wieland, and Samuel Wendell Williston.
In 1906 Richard Swann Lull revived the active collecting program started by Marsh. In 1926 Lull’s tenure saw the transition from the Museum’s first building in downtown New Haven to the present-day Peabody. Lull was closely involved in preparing exhibitions that became the backbone of the Great Hall, including the debut of newly mounted skeletons and his signature flesh reconstructions of prehistoric organisms. In 1936 Lull was succeeded by G. Edward Lewis, who renewed the emphasis on field collecting.
Paleontology at Yale greatly expanded in the last half of the 20th century through the efforts of curators Elwyn L. Simons, John H. Ostrom, Alfred W. Crompton, Keith S. Thomson, David Archibald, and David Pilbeam. Ostrom’s research and writings on the functional morphology of dinosaurs and the evolution of birds was the main impetus behind the “dinosaur renaissance.” His work resulted in the discovery of important new dinosaurs, including Tenontosaurus tilletti, Sauropelta edwardsi, and, most famously, Deinonychus antirrhopus. Active field programs today in the Triassic of Arizona and the K-Pg boundary of Montana continue to build a diversity of vertebrate faunas for ongoing research and public display.
