MARSH, Othniel Charles, American palae ontologist: b. Lockport, N. Y., 29 Oct. 1831; d. New Haven, Conn., 18 March 1899. He was graduated from Yale in 1860, studied in 1860-62 at the Yale (now the Sheffield) Scientific School, in 1862-65 at the German universities of Berlin, Heidelberg and Breslau, and from 1866 until his death was the first •professor of palm ontology at Yale. From 1882 he was vertebrate palaeontologist to the United States Geological Survey, his field-work for the survey ceasing in 1892. His investigations in regard to ex tinct vertebrates are very important and were declared by Charles Darwin to furnish some of the most satisfactory evidence of the evolu tionary theory. He made particular study of the Rocky Mountain region, and from 1868 al most annually organized and conducted expedi tions into that district. In these explorations he discovered over 1,000 new fossil vertebrates, of which he classified and described more than one-half. Among his discoveries are those of the Odontornithes, a subclass of Cretaceous birds, with teeth; the Dinocerata, ungulate ani mals of the Eocene period, elephantine in size; the first known American pterodactyls, or fly ing lizards, and several new families of dinosaurs. Perhaps he was best known for his
study of the primitive horse, the Eohippus, Orohippus and Epihippus. In 1890-99 he made researches in the geology of the region between the Appalachian range and the Atlantic. He was curator of the geological collection of the Yale Museum of Natural History in 1867-99, and in 1898 presented to the university his own collections. He was a nephew of George Pea body (q.v.), and it is said to have been at his suggestion that the Peabody Museum at Yale was established. In 1887 he was made honorary curator of vertebrate palaeontology in the United States National Museum, and in 1898 received the Cuvier medal of the French Acad emy of Sciences. He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1878 and of the National Academy of Sciences in 1883-95. From a bibliography of 237 titles these works by him may be cited: (Odontornithes: A Monograph of the Extinct Toothed Birds of North America' (1880); A Monograph of an Extinct Order of Gigantic Mammals' (1884), and The Dinosaurs of North America' (1896). Consult memoir by C. E. Beecher in the American Jour nal of Science, June 1899.