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=                     Charles_Hazelius_Sternberg                     =
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                            Introduction
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Charles Hazelius Sternberg (June 15, 1850 - July 20, 1943) was an
American fossil collector and paleontologist. He was active in both
fields from 1876 to 1928, and collected fossils for Edward Drinker
Cope and Othniel C. Marsh, and for  the British Museum, the San Diego
Natural History Museum and other museums.

The Sternberg family is legendary in the history of paleontology.
Charles Hazelius was the patriarch, and his three sons, George F.
Sternberg, Charles Mortram Sternberg and Levi Sternberg were also
professional fossil collectors. In 1908, the Sternbergs found a
remarkable duckbill dinosaur mummy in the Lance Formation of eastern
Wyoming, the first such fossil found. After spirited bidding, the
fossil was sold to the American Museum of Natural History.


                             Biography
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Charles Hazelius Sternberg was born near Cooperstown, New York to
Reverend Levi Sternberg and Margaret Levering Miller. At the age of
17, Sternberg moved to Ellsworth County, Kansas where his older
brother, Dr. George M. Sternberg, worked as a military surgeon at Fort
Harker and owned a ranch. Once there, Sternberg became interested in
collecting fossil leaves from the Dakota Sandstone Formation. From
1875 to 1876, Sternberg studied at Kansas State University under noted
paleontologist Benjamin Franklin Mudge, though Sternberg never earned
a degree.

In 1876, Edward Drinker Cope funded Sternberg's first formal
expedition to Park, Kansas, and Sternberg continued to work with Cope
for several field seasons in the years that followed.Sternberg later
collected fossils for Cope's rival in the Bone Wars, Othniel C. Marsh,
working alongside John Bell Hatcher in Long Island, Kansas. Sternberg
also collected for various museums and institutions, and his work took
him all over North America, including locations in California,
Montana, Texas, and Canada.

Sternberg moved to San Diego, California in 1921  and held the
honorary title of Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the San Diego
Natural History Museum. He continued to lead fossil-hunting
expeditions throughout North America and sold his specimens to museums
and universities world-wide. Sternberg's final expedition was to the
Baja Peninsula in 1928.

After his wife's death in 1938, Sternberg moved in with his son Levi
Sternberg in Toronto, Canada, where he lived until his death aged 93.
Sternberg wrote two books about his paleontological adventures: "The
Life of a Fossil Hunter" (1909) and "Hunting Dinosaurs in the Badlands
of the Red Deer River, Alberta, Canada: A Sequel to The Life of a
Fossil Hunter" (1917).


                           Personal life
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Sternberg married Anna Musgrave Reynolds on July 7, 1880. One son died
in toddlerhood, and their only daughter died at age 20 in 1911. Three
sons survived into adulthood, George F. Sternberg (1883-1969), Charles
Mortram Sternberg (1885-1981), and Levi Sternberg (1894-1976), who
also had careers in vertebrate paleontology. They became famous for
their collecting abilities and many discoveries, including the
"Trachodon mummy", an exquisitely preserved specimen of 'Edmontosaurus
annectens' (see hadrosaurid). Son George was also a noted fossil
hunter famous for finding a "fish within a fish" -- a 13 ft
'Xiphactinus' which had inside it a nicely preserved, 6 ft 'Gillicus
arcuatus'.

Charles Sternberg was a deeply religious man. He wrote devotional
poetry and published a collection of poems called 'A Story of the
Past: Or, the Romance of Science' (1911).
In his old age, he would visit the American Museum of Natural History
to view his finds, and one visit to the "Trachodon mummy" inspired the
following quote:


                          Sternberg Museum
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Fossils collected by Charles Sternberg, including dinosaurs from the
western United States and Canada, are in museums around the world.
Many of the fossils discovered by Charles Sternberg's son, George F.
Sternberg, are on display in the Sternberg Museum of Natural History
in Hays, Kansas.


                         In popular culture
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*In Robert J. Sawyer's novel 'End of an Era' (1994), the Canadian
protagonists' time machine is named 'His Majesty's Canadian Timeship
Charles Hazelius Sternberg', because of the two scientists journeying
back to the Cretaceous era, one is a paleontologist. The narrator
comments that "our timeship is almost universally known as the
'Sternberger', because to most people it looks like a fat hamburger."
*Tim Bowling's novel 'The Bone Sharps' (2007) centres about the
fossil-hunting work of Charles Sternberg in Kansas, in 1876 and 1916.
Secondary characters are Sternberg's young assistant, Scott, who
served in the trenches of World War I; another bone hunter, Scott's
fiancée (1916) and possibly widow (1975), Lily; and Charles
Sternberg's deceased daughter, Maud; as well as Edward Drinker Cope
and Cope's wife Annie.

*In 'Dragon Teeth' (published posthumously in 2017), Michael
Crichton's novel about the Bone Wars, Cope is a protagonist and
Sternberg a supporting character.


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