John H. Ostrom - A Profile of the Famous Paleontologist

John H. Ostrom - A Profile of the Famous Paleontologist Name: John H. Ostrom Born/Died: 1928-2005 Nationality: American Dinosaurs Discovered or Named: Deinonychus, Sauropelta, Tenontosaurus, Microvenator About John H. Ostrom Nowadays, pretty much all paleontologists agree that birds descended from dinosaurs. However, that wasn’t the case in the 1960s, when John H. Ostrom of Yale University was the first researcher to propose that dinosaurs had more in common with ostriches and swallows than with snakes, turtles and alligators (to be fair, the heavyweight American  paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh, who also taught at Yale, had proposed this idea in the late 19th century, but he didnt have enough evidence at his disposal to carry the weight of scientific opinion). Ostroms theory about the dinosaur-bird evolutionary link was inspired by his 1964 discovery of Deinonychus, a large, bipedal raptor that displayed some uncannily birdlike characteristics. Today, its (pretty much) an established fact that Deinonychus and its fellow raptors were covered with feathers, not a popular image a generation ago, and one that even current dinosaur enthusiasts have difficulty accepting. (In case you were wondering, those Velociraptors in Jurassic Park were really modeled after the  much bigger  Deinonychus, disregarding the fact that they were portrayed with green reptilian skin rather than feathers.) Fortunately for him, Ostrom lived long enough to learn about the trove of indisputably feathered dinosaurs recently discovered in China, which cemented the dinosaur-bird connection. When he discovered Deinonychus, Ostrom opened the dinosaur equivalent of a hornets nest. Paleontologists werent used to dealing with muscular, man-sized, predatory dinosaursas opposed to familiar, multi-ton carnivores like Allosaurus or Tyrannosaurus Rexwhich prompted speculation about whether an ostensibly cold-blooded reptile could engage in such energetic behavior. In fact, Ostroms student Robert Bakker was the first paleontologist to forcefully propose that all theropod dinosaurs were warm-blooded, a theory thats currently on only slightly shakier ground than the dinosaur-bird connection. ​By the way, he wasnt responsible for either discovering or naming this dinosaur, but the type species of Utahraptor (U. ostrommaysorum) was named after John Ostrom and Chris Mays, a pioneer in animatronic dinosaurs.