Barnum Brown’s Paleo Pick

Barnum Brown was one of the top dinosaur hunters of all time. His nickname was “Mr. Bones,” after all, and according to the paleontological apocrypha surrounding the man, he was so skilled at finding fossils that some joked that he could smell bones. What I didn’t know, though, is that Brown also promoted a pick specially designed for dinosaur hunting.

A good pick is an essential part of the field paleontologist’s arsenal. (Though today Estwing rock hammers are more common.) According to a short Popular Science article published in 1932, Brown found that “no tools on the market quite satisfied needs,” so he created one. The pick had a thin, pointed end and a wider, flatter end on the other side of the head.

But Brown didn’t actually invent the pick, and certainly wasn’t the first to use it. Matthew at The Prep Lounge explains that dinosaur picks had been used by paleontologists for decades, and the tool’s connection to the Yale paleontologist O.C. Marsh led them to be called “Marsh picks.” Brown probably just made a slight modification and the newspaper went with a slightly more hyperbolic presentation. “Paleontologist makes small improvement to traditional tool” isn’t exactly an attention-grabbing headline.

Riley Black | | READ MORE

Riley Black is the author of The Last Days of the Dinosaurs and many other books. She is a science correspondent for Smithsonian magazine covering fossils and natural history, and she writes about the prehistoric past for a variety of publications.