Donald Baird (paleontologist)

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Donald "Don" Baird (* 12. May 1926 in Pittsburgh ; † 13. June 2011 ibid.) Was an American vertebrate - paleontologist . His work focused on vertebrates and terrestrial vertebrates - tracks of the Carboniferous and Mesozoic Era in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada ( Appalachian region and basin of the Newark supergroup ). Baird studied, taught and worked at two of the most prestigious universities in the USA: Harvard and Princeton . His services consist not only in the discovery of numerous fossil deposits , in the collecting and cataloging of numerous fossils as well as in the description and revision of many fossil taxa and trace taxa , but also in the development and further development of collection and preparation techniques, especially the use of latex for the creation of casts of fossils in imprint preservation .

Life and career

Main entrance to Guyot Hall, the former home of the Princeton Museum of Natural History, where Baird worked from 1957 to 1988.

Donald Baird was the son of Mary Alma Barton Johnson Baird and George Mahaffey Patterson Baird, descendants of Scottish and Northern Irish immigrants. Little Don was noticed early on by his great thirst for knowledge and his interest in science and history. As a student, he won awards at research exhibitions and volunteered in the vertebrate fossil and archeology departments at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History . After graduating from high school in 1943, he first enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh . Soon after, however, he joined the army and experienced the last months of World War II in Germany as a member of the 609th US tank destroyer battalion .

After his honorable discharge, he returned to the University of Pittsburgh, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in geology and biology in 1947 . He then moved to the University of Colorado at Boulder , where he earned his master's degree in 1949 . Towards the end of 1949, Baird accepted a position as a curator at the Geological Museum at the University of Cincinnati . Almost exactly two years later he left Cincinnati and became a doctoral student with one of the most important vertebrate paleontologists of his time, Alfred Romer at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard . The subject of his dissertation was the tetrapod tracks in the Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of the Connecticut Valley (Hartford Basin, Newark Supergroup).

After successfully completing his doctorate in 1955, he initially unsuccessfully applied to various paleontological institutions and therefore stayed at Harvard for a while. In 1957 he was finally successful and got a position as a curator at Princeton University's Natural History Museum (Princeton Museum of Natural History), then a famous research institution for paleontology. In 1974, the long-time director of the museum Glenn L. Jepsen died and Baird succeeded him. However, there have been currents in the Princeton Geological Institute since the 1960s that opposed paleontology. These currents intensified over time, which in the 1980s eventually led to the institute selling off the paleontological collection, with the exception of a few valuable exhibits. A Baird was tasked with finding new locations for the collection. The vertebrate collection was taken over by the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale , with which Baird had had close ties since his doctoral studies.

In 1988, Baird officially retired and moved back to Pittsburgh. But even in retirement he continued to collect and describe vertebrate fossils. For this purpose he had set up a study in the basement of his house. From the end of the 1990s, his scientific work was limited to his own four walls, partly due to increasing frailty.

family

Donald Baird married on February 14, 1948, Hellen Lucille "Lucy" Bailey, whom he had met while studying undergraduate studies as part of a sideline at the Carnegie Museum. She studied with Donald in Boulder and accompanied him on numerous field excursions and excavations in the 1950s. She contributed significantly to his work with important fossil finds, including the first tetrapod body fossils in a carbonaceous locality near Parrsboro , Nova Scotia, previously known only for tracking , and geological observations. Her early death in 1963 was generally viewed as a tragic loss. The marriage resulted in two sons, Andy and Laurel.

Working as a paleontologist and companion

During his time in Boulder (1947–1949), Baird first came into contact with fossil footsteps and tracks from terrestrial vertebrates, as well as with Frank Peabody , who had optimized the study of such fossils by applying strictly scientific methods. Baird, on the other hand, optimized the collection technique: tetrapod tread seals often appear on the layers of massive sandstone banks, so that their recovery is very laborious and the pieces take up a lot of space in the means of transport and in the collections. An alternative to salvage was to make casts from plaster of paris, although the results mostly left something to be desired. Instead of plaster of paris, Baird used latex, which he learned to use at the Carnegie Museum. Latex was light, did not break and also resolved the three-dimensional structures in the rock much better.

As a curator in Cincinnati (1947–1949), Baird learned of the Upper Carboniferous fossil-ocality in Linton, Jefferson County, Ohio . It is the Diamond Coal Mine , a coal mine that was closed in 1921 and from which vertebrate fossils were described as early as the 19th century. There were still large amounts of Kännelkohle stockpiled, which had been discarded by the mining company at the time and which contained the remains of numerous vertebrate taxa. For the investigation of these pieces, Baird further developed his latex casting technique in that he combined it with an etching technique: with the help of a weak acid, remnants of the already poorly preserved skeletons are removed from the carbon clay stone in order to obtain a "clean" hollow shape is then carefully brushed repeatedly with a latex solution. The resulting thick latex skin (“peel”) is then removed from the impression and can be examined like a “normal” skeleton preserved as a positive relief. Over the course of several decades, he prepared every major fossil specimen from Linton.

As a doctoral student (1951–1955) he visited many institutions on the US east coast to make casts of fossil footsteps. He met the elderly Richard S. Lull at the Peabody Museum B in Yale , who was an expert on the Mesozoic tetrapod tracks of the Connecticut Valley. Baird's enthusiasm for paleontology impressed Lull so much that he gave Baird unrestricted access to all collections in the Peabody Museum.

Together with his doctoral supervisor Alfred Romer , he explored the carbon of Nova Scotia for the first time in 1956. During this excursion, in which numerous other Romer collaborators also took part, vertebrate fossils and the like were discovered. a. in the Dominion Coal Co. Strip Mine No. 7 found near Florence in the Sydney coalfield. This open-cast mine later came to some fame as a type locality of the fossil genera Paleothyris and Archaeothyris , which today are among the oldest amniotes (" reptiles ") in phylogeny . The vertebrates are there, similar to the much better known site in Joggins , handed down in the stumps of fossil limpets . Paleothyris and Archaeothyris were not described by Baird himself, but by other students of Romer. With one of these students, Robert L. Carroll , Baird described in 1967 together another taxon from Nova Scotia, Romeriscus periallus , as the oldest "reptile" in phylogeny. However, a subsequent examination of this material has shown that no precise information can be given about its affiliation to a specific tetrapod group. The type material of " Romeriscus " had been found by Baird together with William F. Take, at the time geology curator at the Nova Scotia Museum of Science C in Halifax , in the Upper Carboniferous near Port Hood, Inverness County. Other more significant Carboniferous localities where Baird and colleagues collected body and trace fossils are Point Edward on Cape Breton Island and Horton Bluff on the south side of the Minas Basin, the eastern branch of the upper Bay of Fundy .

With William Take, Baird, now a curator at Princeton, also explored the early Mesozoic deposits of Nova Scotia in the late 1950s, which belong to the same lithostratigraphic series as the Mesozoic sedimentary rocks in southeast Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey (Newark supergroup). In 1963, however, the two curators broke up. Originally, Baird and Take had agreed that all material they had collected together should be deposited in the Nova Scotia Museum of Science in Halifax. Annoyed by Takes 'slow pace in identifying, cataloging, and dissecting the fossils, Baird agreed in Takes' absence with the director of the Science Museum that all material be given to the Princeton Museum on permanent loan. Take never forgave him for this.

Baird also had a rather cold relationship with Glenn L. Jepsen, the director of the Princeton Museum. Jepsen had brought him to Princeton in 1957, but their contrasting personalities created tension between the two men. However, Baird's professional commitment and his professional competence, especially in the museum sector, ensured that he was a valuable employee for Jepsen, whom he could not do without, so that Baird stayed in Princeton until Jepsen's death in 1974 and ultimately even Jepsen as director inherited from the museum.

Step seal of the Ichnogus Grallator on the track plate recovered in 1984 near Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, shown in 1986 in Time Magazine as "the smallest dinosaur tracks in the world". D The coin in the picture, a 1 cent piece (diameter: almost 2 cm), is used to compare the size.

After breaking with William Take, Baird continued his field work in the Old Mesozoic era of Nova Scotia. As in the 1950s and during the exploration of the carbon, he also resorted to the local knowledge of local hobby collectors. His work focused on the Central to Upper Triassic Wolfville Formation and the Lower Jurassic McCoy-Brook Formation. The most spectacular results of these activities were the discovery of the oldest dinosaur in eastern North America in the McCoy-Brook Formation in 1976 (the location was the relatively abundant Wasson Bluff ) and in 1984, in the same formation, the discovery of a tiny dinosaur track, which it even did in 1986 Made into Time Magazine . Originally, the corresponding tracking plate was recovered because of other, larger footsteps of the trace genus Batrachopus and without Baird's participation. It was not until the slab was cleaned of adhering sludge in Baird's preparation workshop in Princeton that the less than 2 cm long representatives of the Grallator trace genus came to light.

After his retirement, Baird turned back to predominantly the Carboniferous Ohio Valley. He had heard of vertebrate animals found in an open pit coal mine near Youngstown , Mahoning County , a few years before retirement . Like in Linton, the vertebrates in the so-called "Five Points" locality are preserved in Kännelkohl and are about the same age. After the open pit was closed, Baird began to sift around 1000 tons of Kännel coal. At his side was the coalologist and paleontologist Robert W. Hook, with whom Baird had already published on the Linton site in the mid-1980s. Hook and Baird had been looking through the Five Point material for almost 10 years and Baird prepared and identified around 1700 fossil specimens in the basement of his house during this time. With this he laid the foundation for the further scientific processing of these pieces and consequently also for the future increase in knowledge about Upper Carboniferous vertebrate faunas. A preliminary description of the composition of the fossilized vertebrate fauna of Five Points appeared in 1993.

particularities

Baird's keen senses and photographic memory are particularly emphasized. During the scientific processing of trace fossils and their latex casts as part of his dissertation, he noticed that two copies of a fossil footstep from the Upper Triassic of the Newark supergroup, which were in two different collections and whose labels said that they came from different locations actually the plate and the counter plate are from the same fossil (the piece that has been poorly preserved was the holotype of Chirotherium lulli Bock 1952). More than 15 years later, Baird found the lower jaw of a "lower" tetrapod in the Point Edward locality in the Lower Carboniferous Nova Scotia, which, according to his records, was immediately known as the counterpart of a 1958 Romer named? Pholiderpeton bretonense described the lower jaw.

Baird went “astray” when he published an article in a cryptozoological journal in 1989, relatively shortly after his retirement . In it he describes how it is possible, using a technique that he knew from the Carnegie Museum, and a partial step that he himself used to create his latex "peels" from vertebrate fossils from Linton (and later from "Five Points") used to create realistic-looking footprints of the mythical North American great ape Bigfoot (also called "Sasquatch"). He wanted to show that the corresponding footprints, which are cited by some cryptozoologists as proof of Bigfoot's existence, could be forgeries.

Described taxa

The taxa or their names listed below are each the basionym , i.e. that is, the name under which the taxon was first described at the time. Any subsequent changes to the taxonomic status are noted.

Vertebrates

  • 1962: Spathicephalus pereger , Point Edward, Nova Scotia, Serpukhovium , an ancestral tetrapod
  • 1967 (with RL Carroll as co-author): Romeriscus periallus , Cape Linzee, Nova Scotia, Bashkirium (Westfal A), originally described as Limnoscelide , currently Tetrapoda inc. sed. and noun dubium
  • 1972 (as co-author of RL Carroll):
    • Brouffia orientalis , Nýřany, Czech Republic, Moskovium (Westfal D), originally described as a "stem reptile" (according to the reading at the time, a member of a group of very original amniotes from which both the ancestors of mammals and the ancestors of today's reptiles and birds emerged ,) today at the base of the eureptilia found
    • Coelostegus prothales , same locality and taxonomic history as Brouffia orientalis
In the same work, the "trunk reptile" genus Anthracodromeus was established to accommodate the species Tuditanus longipes ( Cope 1874), which was previously assigned to various non-amniotic groups
  • 1998 (as co-author of H.-D. Sues):
    • Acadiella psalidodon , Evangeline Beach, Nova Scotia, Carnium , a procolophonide
    • Haligonia bolodon , Burntcoat, Nova Scotia, Carnium, also a procolophonide
    • Scoloparia glyphanodon , Wattzone off Boot Island, Nova Scotia, Carnium, also a Procolophonide

Trace taxa

  • 1954: Chirotherium Lomasi , Storeton at Liverpool, Anisian , a Pseudosuchier -trace is alternatively Ichnogattung, Isochirotherium assigned
  • 1957 (in the publication of the dissertation):
    • Chirotherium eyermani , Smith Clark quarry, New Jersey, Upper Triassic, a pseudosuchier trail, is alternatively assigned to the genus Brachychirotherium
    • Grallator sulcatus , "Quarry of the Messrs. Clark," New Jersey, Upper Triassic, originally called theropods described trail, later by Olsen & Baird (1986) in which of them newly built track genus Atreipus found their causes probably no dinosaurs in the real sense, but at least no theropods were (see below)
    • Rhynchosauroides hyperbates , Smith Clark quarry, New Jersey, Upper Triassic, the trace of an early lepidosaur , probably a sphenodontid
  • 1986 (as co-author of PE Olsen): Atreipus acadianus , Paddy Island, Nova Scotia, Carnium , a trace that is attributed to archosaurs from the closer relationship of the dinosaurs (basal Dinosauromorpha)

Honors

Dedication names

Other honors

In 1996, Baird received the Joseph T. Gregory Prize of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), the world's most important international association of vertebrate paleontologists. Baird had been an honorary member there since 1991. The prize has been awarded since 1992 for outstanding services to the welfare of the SVP.

Publications

  • 1954: Chirotherium lulli , a pseudosuchian reptile from New Jersey. Bulletin of The Museum of Comparative Zoology. Vol. 111, No. 4, pp. 163–192 (digital copy: BHL )
  • 1955: Latex micro-molding and latex-plaster molding mixture. Science. Vol. 122, p. 202, doi : 10.1126 / science.122.3161.202
  • 1957: Triassic reptile footprint faunules from Milford, New Jersey. Bulletin of The Museum of Comparative Zoology. Vol. 117, No. 5, pp. 447-520 (digitized version: BHL ), publication of the dissertation
  • 1964: The aïstopod amphibians surveyed. Breviora. No. 206 (digital copy : BHL )
  • 1965: Paleozoic lepospondyl amphibians. American Zoologist. Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 287-294 doi : 10.1093 / icb / 5.2.287
  • 1967, with Robert L. Carroll as co-author: Romeriscus , the oldest known reptile. Science. Vol. 157, pp. 56-59, doi : 10.1126 / science.157.3784.56
  • 1970: Type Specimen of the Oligocene Frog Zaphrissa eurypelis Cope, 1866. Copeia. Vol. 1970, No. 2, pp. 384-385 ( JSTOR 1441673 )
  • 1972, as co-author of Robert L. Carroll: Carboniferous stem-reptiles of the family Romeriidae. Bulletin of The Museum of Comparative Zoology. Vol. 143, No. 5, pp. 321–363 (digital copy: BHL )
  • 1980: The burnt dope technique and other intertidal ploys from America. The Geological Curator. Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 519-520 ( PDF 5.3 MB), originally published in 1978 in the magazine The Chiseler , Vol. 1, No. 2
  • 1983, co-author of Robert R. Reisz: Captorhinomorph “stem” reptiles from the Pennsylvanian coal-swamp deposit of Linton, Ohio. Annals of the Carnegie Museum. Vol. 52, item no. 18, pp. 393-411
  • 1986, co-author of Robert W. Hook: The Diamond Coal Mine of Linton, Ohio, and its Pennsylvanian-age vertebrates. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 174-190 ( JSTOR 4523086 )
  • 1986, as co-author of Paul E. Olsen: The ichnogenus Atreipus and its significance for Triassic biostratigraphy. In: K. Padian (Ed.): The beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs: faunal change across the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 61-87.
  • 1993, as co-author of Robert W. Hook: A new fish and tetrapod assemblage from the Allegheny Group (late Westphalian, Upper Carboniferous) of eastern Ohio, USA In: Ulrich HJ Heidtke (add.), Karl Stapf (red.) : New Research on Permo-Carboniferous Faunas. The First International POLLICHIA Symposium at the Pfalzmuseum für Naturkunde (POLLICHIA-Museum) Bad Dürkheim, September 24-28 1990. POLLICHIA-Book No. 29, Bad Dürkheim 1993
  • 1998, as co-author of Hans-Dieter Sues: Procolophonidae (Reptilia: Parareptilia) from the Upper Triassic Wolfville Formation of Nova Scotia, Canada. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 525-532, doi : 10.1080 / 02724634.1998.10011079 (alternatively: JSTOR 4523923 )
  • 2011, as co-author of Robert Holmes: The smaller embolomerous amphibians (Anthracosauria) from the middle Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) at Linton and Five Points coal mines, Ohio. Breviora. No. 523 (digitized version : BHL )

literature

Web links

Remarks

A. In 2000, the Princeton Museum of Natural History also closed.
B. The namesake of the museum is not Frank Peabody mentioned above.
C.Now the Museum of Natural History in The Nova Scotia Museum .
D.The information about Baird's discoverer status, the exact origin of the plate and the “record status” of the footprints are contradictory: On the website of the Nova Scotia Museum, the hobby geologist Eldon George from Parrsboro, who has worked with Baird since 1959, is named as the discoverer of the trail. Sues et al. (2013), however, indicate that George indeed the plate and the Batrachopus , but the tiny not -Trittsiegel Grallator have discovered first and was not involved in the salvage of the plate. While the location on the museum website, as it was in Time Magazine, is given as Wasson Bluff , Sues et al. (2013) that the slab was recovered from McKay Head , a basalt promontory (North Mountain Formation, Lower Jurassic) about 3 km east of Wasson Bluff. The traces from Nova Scotia are also still referred to on the museum website as the "smallest dinosaur track in the world". However, in 2005 grallators were described from the middle Jurassic layers of the Isle of Skye in Scotland , which are said to be a little smaller than those from Nova Scotia. However, the museum website claims that some of the Nova Scotia kick seals were only 1.1 cm long, while the smallest from Skye were 1.78 cm long. The Guinness Book , in turn, officially lists Skye as the world's smallest.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert L. Carroll: A Middle Pennsylvanian Captorhinomorph, and the Interrelationships of Primitive Reptiles. Journal of Paleontology, Vol. 43, No. 1, 1969, pp. 151-170 ( JSTOR 1302357 )
  2. ^ Robert Reisz: Pelycosaurian Reptiles from the Middle Pennsylvanian of North America. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Vol. 144, No. 2, 1972, pp. 27-60 (digitized: BHL ).
  3. ^ A b Baird & Carroll: Romeriscus , the oldest known reptile. 1967 (see publications )
  4. ↑ a b Michel Laurin, Robert R. Reisz: A Reassessment of the Pennsylvanian Tetrapod Romeriscus. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 12, No. 4, 1992, pp. 524-527, doi : 10.1080 / 02724634.1992.10011478 (alternatively: JSTOR 4523476 )
  5. ^ A b Lawrence H. Tanner: Formal definition of the Lower Jurassic McCoy Brook Formation, Fundy Rift Basin, eastern Canada. Atlantic Geology. Vol. 32, No. 2, 1996, pp. 127-135, doi : 10.4138 / 2083
  6. ↑ Joseph Wisnovsky: Science: A Rosetta Stone of Evolution - Scientists find a fossil trove in a Nova Scotia cliff. Time. Vol. 127, No. 7, 1986
  7. ^ Among other things, the 1986 review article The Diamond Coal Mine of Linton, Ohio, and Its Pennsylvanian-Age Vertebrates (see publications )
  8. ↑ Hook & Baird: A new fish and tetrapod assemblage from eastern Ohio, USA 1993 (see publications )
  9. ^ Alfred Sherwood Romer: An embolomere jaw from the mid-carboniferous of Nova-Scotia. Breviora. No. 87, 1958 (digital copy : BHL )
  10. ^ Donald Baird: Sasquatch footprints: a proposed method of fabrication. Cryptozoology. Vol. 8, 1989, pp. 43-46
  11. ^ A b Carroll & Baird: Carboniferous stem-reptiles of the family Romeriidae. 1972 (see publications )
  12. ↑ Johannes Müller, Robert R. Reisz: The Phylogeny of Early Eureptiles: Comparing Parsimony and Bayesian Approaches in the Investigation of a Basal Fossil Clade. Systematic Biology. Vol. 55, No. 3, 2006, pp. 503-511, doi : 10.1080 / 10635150600755396 .
  13. ^ A b c Sues & Baird: Procolophonidae from the Upper Triassic Wolfville Formation. 1998 (see publications ), p. 526 ff.
  14. ↑ Baird: Chirotherium lulli , a pseudosuchian reptile from New Jersey. 1954 (see publications ), p. 189
  15. ↑ JC Harper: The type of Chirotherium lomasi Baird. Geological Journal. Vol. 1, No. 5, 1956, p. 427, doi : 10.1002 / gj.3350010503
  16. ↑ Michael J. King, William AS Sarjeant, David B. Thompson, Geoffrey Tresise: A Revised Systematic Ichnotaxonomy and Review of the Vertebrate Footprint Ichnofamily Chirotheriidae from the British Triassic. Ichnos. Vol. 12, No. 4, 2005, pp. 241-299, doi : 10.1080 / 10420940591009312
  17. ^ Baird: Triassic reptile footprint faunules from Milford, New Jersey. 1957 (see publications ), p. 479 ff.
  18. ↑ Earle E. Spamer, Edward Daeschler, L. Gay Vostreys-Shapiro: A Study of Fossil Vertebrate Types in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia Special Publication. Vol. 16, 1995, pp. 287-293
  19. ^ Baird: Triassic reptile footprint faunules from Milford, New Jersey. 1957 (see publications ), p. 453 ff.
  20. ↑ a b Olsen & Baird: The Ichnogenus Atreipus. 1986 (see publications ), p. 68 ff.
  21. ^ Baird: Triassic reptile footprint faunules from Milford, New Jersey. 1957 (see publications ), p. 494 ff.
  22. ↑ Hartmut Haubold, Hendrik Klein: The dinosauroid tracks Parachirotherium - Atreipus - Grallator from the lower Middle Keuper (Upper Triassic: Ladin, Karn,? Nor) in Franconia. Hallesches Jahrbuch für Geoswissenschaften. Vol. B 22, 2000, pp. 59-85
  23. ^ Hans-Dieter Sues, Neil H. Shubin, Paul E. Olsen: A new sphenodontian (Lepidosauria: Rhynchocephalia) from the McCoy Brook Formation (Lower Jurassic) of Nova Scotia, Canada. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 14, 1994, pp. 327-340, doi : 10.1080 / 02724634.1994.10011563
  24. ^ SVP Award, Prize and Grant Recipients - Gregory Award. List of Joseph T. Gregory Prize Winners, official website of the SVP
  25. ^ Past Honorary Membership Award Recipients. List of honorary members of the SVP, official website of the SVP
  26. ^ Gregory Award. Brief description of the Gregory Prize, official website of the SVP
  27. ^ Rex Dalton: Anger as Princeton closes 'inspirational' museum. Nature. Vol. 407, 2000, p. 825, doi : 10.1038 / 35038234
  28. ↑ Geology Collection - Grallator sp. - World's Smallest Dinosaur Footprints. Photo and short explanatory text for a fragment of the track record from Wasson Bluff and McKay Head on the website of the museum association The Nova Scotia Museum .
  29. ↑ Sues et al .: Donald Baird and his discoveries ... 2013, see literature , p. 99 f.
  30. ^ Neil DL Clark, Dugald A. Ross, Paul Booth: Dinosaur Tracks from the Kilmaluag Formation (Bathonian, Middle Jurassic) of Score Bay, Isle of Skye, Scotland, UK . Ichnos. Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005, pp. 93-104, doi : 10.1080 / 10420940590914516 (alternative full-text access : University of Glasgow , unlayed manuscript with poor graphic quality)
  31. ^ Neil DL Clark: Dinosaurs in Scotland. Deposits Magazine. No. 12, 2007, pp. 36–39 (full text access : University of Glasgow , unlayed manuscript with poor graphic quality)
  32. ↑ Smallest dinosaur footprint. guinnessworldrecords.com
personal data
SURNAME Baird, Donald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baird, Don (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American vertebrate paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 2011
Place of death Pittsburgh