Roland Thaxter Bird, universally and affectionately known to friends and associates as R. T., achieved a kind of Horatio Alger success in the scientific world of dinosaur studies. Forced to drop out of school at a young age by ill health, he was a cowboy who traveled from job to job by motorcycle until he met Barnum Brown, Curator of Vertebrae Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a leader in the study of dinosaurs. Beginning in 1934, Bird spent many years as an employee of the museum and as Brown's right-hand man in the field. His chart of the Howe Quarry in Wyoming, a massive sauropod boneyard, is one of the most complex paleontological charts ever produced and a work of art in its own right. His crowning achievement was the discovery, collection, and interpretation of gigantic Cretaceous dinosaur trackways along the Paluxy River near Glen Rose and at Bandera, Texas. A trackway from Glen Rose is on exhibit at the American Museum and at the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin. His interpretation of these trackways demonstrated that a large carnosaur had pursued and attacked a sauropod, that sauropods migrated in herds, and that, contrary to then-current belief, sauropods were able to support their own weight out of deep water. These behavioral interpretations anticipated later dinosaur studies by at least two decades. From his first meeting with Barnum Brown to his discoveries at Glen Rose and Bandera, this very human account tells the story of Bird's remarkable work on dinosaurs. In a vibrantly descriptive style, Bird recorded both the intensity and excitement of field work and the careful and painstaking detail of laboratory reconstruction. His memoir presents a vivid picture of camp life with Brown and the inner workings of the famous American Museum of Natural History, and it offers a new and humanizing account of Brown himself, one of the giants of his field. Bird's memoir has been supplemented with a clear and concise introduction to the field of dinosaur study and with generous illustrations which delineate the various types of dinosaurs.

Bones for Barnum Brown: Adventures of a Dinosaur Hunter

Biographies & Memoirs

Bird, Roland Thaxter

Professionals & Academics

Texas Christian Univ Pr

THE hundred-year history of the Renderbrook Spade Ranch mirrors the history of ranching in West Texas, tracing ranching's evolution from an open-range, Longhorn-dominated industry to today's forward-looking specialized operations which survive by using state-of-the-art technology in genetics, nutrition, marketing and range science. The story is one of slow but steady progress from the horse-and-wagon era to the age of computers, crossbreeding and embryo transplants. But the Spade is also unique. Its history is strongly tied to the development of barbed wire, that Yankee invention that forever changed the face of ranching in Texas. Established as an investment for earnings that barbed wire had brought to Illinois farmer-entrepreneur Isaac Ellwood, the ranch still belongs to Ellwood descendents. It is one of the few begun during the period between the Civil War and the turn of the century that remains in family hands by the 1980s. In his foreword to this lively and fascinating history of a ranch and the people who made it, Elmer Kelton writes "That [the Spade] continues into a second century under the same family's ownership is a tribute to that family and to the many loyal employees whose labor, intelligence and devotion have kept it afloat during drouths and depressions that brought ruin to many similar ranches."

Renderbrook: A Century Under the Spade Brand

History

Kelton, Steve

Americas

363 pages - Number Four in the Chisholm Trail Series - Republic of Texas 1836-1846

Dream of Empire: A Human History of the Republic of Texas, 1836-1846 (Chisholm Trail, 4)

Weems, John Edward

Tolbert of Texas: The Man and His Work

Literature & Fiction

Tolbert, Frank X.

History & Criticism

VG/VG, INSCRIBED TO SUZANNE AND SIGNED BY AUTHOR, 364 PAGES

Hell's Half Acre: The Life and Legend of a Red-Light District (Chisholm Trail, 9)

Selcer, Richard F.

Lone Hunter's Gray Pony, Lone Hunter and the Cheyennes, War Pony: Tales of Indians, Horses, and Adventure in the American West (Chaparral Books for Y)

Worcester, Donald Emmet

Children's Books

Decorating Texas: Decorative Painting in the Lone Star State from the 1850s to the 1950s

Arts & Photography

Harwood, Buie

Painting

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”—A. Lincoln Continuing the saga told in Letters to Oma of the von Scholls, a German family immigrating to Texas in 1847, A House Divided tells the story of the effect of the Civil War on German Texans who frowned on slavery and, like Sam Houston, thought the Union must be preserved at all costs. The von Scholl family is split apart when two brothers choose different sides—Will joining the Confederacy and Fred refusing to fight. When Fred is killed by renegade southerners and Will captured by Union soldiers, sixteen-year-old Louisa—Tina’s baby sister in Letters to Oma—masquerades as a hospital orderly to rescue Will from his Yankee prison. Louisa’s adventuresome story stands for that of over 800 women, on both sides, who actually went to war during this tragic conflict.

A House Divided (Chaparral Books)

Gurasich, Marj

Ride for the Brand: The Poetry and Songs of Red Steagall

Steagall, Red

Poetry

Captured by the Comanches at the age of nine, Helen dreams of escape for more than fourteen years yet, when the time comes to choose freedom she discovers no choice exists as she has become absorbed in the Comanche culture.

A Woman of the People

Benjamin Capps

Contemporary

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