Jack Horner

Like many six-year-olds, Jack Horner had a fascination with dinosaurs.  Unlike many kids his age, however, he found a real fossil behind his house.  That discovery sparked a lifelong interest in paleontology.

“By the time I was eight, I had discovered my first dinosaur bone, which I still have today,” says the world-renowned paleontologist, a presidential fellow at Chapman since 2016, where he teaches the Honors course Dinosaurs: In Science and Media.

Thanks to support from his parents regarding his interest in dinosaurs, by the time Horner turned 13, he had amassed an extensive collection of fossils and bones.  It was at that point he approached the local library in his hometown of Shelby, Montana and asked about making an exhibit.

“That first exhibit remained at the library for years until they moved it to the nearby Marias Museum of History & Art,” says Horner, whose career includes publishing numerous professional and popular articles and books, including Digging Dinosaurs: The Search That Unraveled the Mystery of Baby Dinosaurs.

Horner served as the consulting paleontologist for the Jurassic Park film franchise and was Michael Crichton’s basis for the Alan Grant character.  For 34 years, he was Regent’s Professor of Paleontology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Montana State University in Bozeman and Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies.

Bumpy Educational Experience

While Horner is in academia, he has no formal degrees.  Due to undiagnosed extreme dyslexia, he didn’t fare well with traditional education.  “I flunked all of my classes in high school, but because I was a war baby and the classes were much larger than prior year’s classes, they didn’t hold any of us back,” says Horner, who never learned to read, despite having extensively written and published during his career.

He may have flunked science classes in high school, but he won first place in a local science fair his senior year for a dinosaur project.  “The judges, including a geologist from the University of Montana, were very impressed,” he says.  “As a result, I was invited to study geology at the University, but I flunked everything the first semester, including paleontology, and was put on academic probation.  The next semester, I flunked out with a 0.06 grade point average.”

Soon after, Horner was drafted into the Marine Corp and sent to Camp Pendleton for training prior to heading to the Vietnam War, where he performed reconnaissance work for 14 months.  He came back to the States in March 1968 and by the following fall had returned to the University of Montana on the GI Bill but soon flunked out again.

“I had an advisor at the time baffled as to how I could know so much about dinosaurs and not pass any classes,” says Horner.  “He wrote this incredible letter to the Dean of Students requesting that I be allowed to take classes not for credit.”

Horner ended up attending 14 semesters over seven years, taking every geology, zoology and paleontology class offered.  He also worked as curator for the university’s museum, where he learned how to prepare fossils for exhibit and study.

When he finished, Horner went back home to Shelby where he worked with his brother for a short time in their father’s sand and gravel business.  The work wasn’t for him, so he headed to the University of Montana in Missoula to take more paleontology classes.  It was there he met his first wife, with whom he had a son.  After he finished several courses, in 1975, he and his family returned to Shelby and he began applying to museums.  He eventually landed a position as a preparator at the University of Princeton and not long after also began curating the Dinosaur Collection at the American Museum in New York.

Groundbreaking Discoveries

In the summer of 1977, Horner went to where he had found his first dinosaur bone in Montana and discovered the first dinosaur egg in the Western Hemisphere.

“When I returned to Princeton after that trip, I began studying dinosaur eggs and juvenile dinosaurs.  There wasn’t much written about them, so I had found my niche,” he says.

The following summer in 1978 he returned to Montana and made a discovery that led to a seminal moment in his career.  He and a college friend visited a woman who owned a rock/gem shop to identify dinosaur fossils.  She also asked them about some tiny bones she had found.

“I almost fell on the floor when I saw them, because they were baby dinosaur bones, and the first in the world to be discovered,” says Horner.

After getting permission to excavate the site where she had found the bones, Horner discovered the first nest of baby dinosaurs.  “That discovery made headlines around the world,” says Horner, who returned to Princeton and wrote a paper about the babies he had found and the fact that it was a new dinosaur species they named Maiasaura.  His paper was published in the esteemed science journal Nature.

Recognition and Promotion

After Horner’s article in Nature, Princeton promoted him to research scientist, even though he had never earned a formal degree.  “I secured a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), hired my own preparator and got lab space at Princeton,” he says.

For the next several years, he continued to return to Montana every summer to the same collection site.  While there in 1981, he met the Director of the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University and was subsequently hired as their curator, so he left Princeton for Bozeman.

Initially, because of his lack of any formal degrees, he couldn’t teach at the university.  But then he secured a second grant from the NSF, wrote another paper for Nature and became the first recipient in the Northwestern U.S. of the prestigious MacArthur fellowship.  The University of Montana responded by awarding him an honorary Doctor of Science in 1986, allowing him to teach.

As far as Mark B. Goodwin sees it, Horner more than deserves his honorary status.  The Emeritus Assistant Director of the UC Museum of Paleontology has known Horner for more than 40 years.

“Jack is one of vertebrate paleontology’s major contributors to the field,” says Goodwin.  “His discovery of baby dinosaurs and nesting grounds in Montana was a watershed event that led to novel interpretations and subsequent investigations of dinosaur growth and behavior.  Jack also helped popularize our science in a major way through movies, documentaries and popular and peer-reviewed literature.”

Holly Woodward joined the PhD program at Montana State University in 2005, with Horner as her advisor.

“Jack found the first evidence of dinosaurs providing parental care for their young and helped change public perception of them from overgrown reptiles to caring, bird-like parents,” says Woodward.  “His work led to numerous discoveries about how dinosaurs changed appearances through their display structures (horns, spikes, etc.).  This helps us recognize that dinosaurs once considered different species were just different life stages of the same species.  He has also trained many paleontology students, and in a broader sense has reached huge audiences with his advisory roles in the Jurassic Park films.  The films have inspired many young individuals to pursue careers in science.”

Joining Chapman

After retiring from Montana State University in 2016, Horner thought he would spend his days writing—until he gave a keynote speech at a Chapman dyslexia conference.

“When I finished my talk, which discussed thinking outside the box and challenging the status quo, President Daniele Struppa asked if I would consider teaching at Chapman.  I originally thought I couldn’t leave Montana, but I took the position and have been living and working in Old Towne for the last eight years, and really enjoy it,” says Horner.

“Jack’s speech was a fantastic mixture of genetics, biology, and just plain whimsical thinking,” says Struppa.  “I knew he would be a fantastic teacher for our students, who need truly creative thinkers like him.  Jack understands how people learn—even those who don’t learn in the traditional way—and reaches them in ways most of us cannot even hope to do.  I have attended some of his classes and seen firsthand how students adore his intelligence and humanity.

“Jack has transformed the field of paleontology with his understanding of dinosaur development and embryology,” continues Struppa.  “I didn’t hire him to teach paleontology or start such a program.  His main contribution is the vitality he brings to the classroom and his ability to connect with students who think differently (especially dyslexic students) and more generally to create an intellectually vibrant community on campus.  He has accomplished this and much more.  We now also have dinosaur remains on campus in the DinoLab that sees students at work on very delicate tasks.”

Woodward agrees. “Jack is most interested in students thinking critically about a question and not necessarily about a right or wrong answer.  He taught me to look at the question or problem from all sides, and to not make assumptions, which has helped me academically and professionally.  I learned that a good scientist looks for ways to test and reject their hypothesis, rather than evidence to prove it.  I have been able to meet up with Jack in Montana during summer fieldwork for most of the years since I graduated 10 years ago. I am still learning from him and will continue to do so.”