John R. Jack Horner Biography

John R. “Jack” Horner

One of the best known American paleontologists, Jack Horner discovered and named two species of dinosaurs, Maiasaura and Orodromeus. He was the first paleontologist to discover evidence of parental care by dinosaurs when he discovered a colony of eggs belonging to the duckbilled Maiasaura in Montana. In 2001 he discovered the fossils of the largest known Tyrannosaurus rex among the fossils of five others. Horner currently serves as the curator of paleontology at Montana's Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University at Bozeman, where he also teaches. Horner worked as technical adviser for the Jurassic Park movies. (The paleontologist in Jurassic Park, Alan Grant, is said to have been based on him.) Horner's publications include Digging Dinosaurs (1988), Complete T-rex (with D, Lessem, 1993), Maia, A Dinosaur Grows Up (1985), Digging Up Tyrannosaurus rex (with D, Lessem, 1992), Dinosaur Eggs and Babies (1994), and Dinosaur Lives (1997).