The Sauropods: Evolution and Paleobiology

A Conversation with Jack McIntosh

John S. (“Jack”) McIntosh has been a leading student of sauropod dinosaurs for well over half a century. During the course of his long career, Jack has been influenced by legendary paleontologists such as Barnum Brown, Richard Lull, Friedrich von Huene, and Alfred Romer, and he continues to influence young dinosaur paleontologists. Jack’s two main interests, sauropod dinosaurs and the history of North American paleontology, intersect in the badlands of the western United States during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope discovered and described Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, and many other dinosaurs. During long hours at museums studying bones and examining field notes, maps, and journals, Jack has reconstructed the events of many field seasons over decades of dinosaur collecting. His sleuthing has recovered lost details about the provenance and associations of many dinosaur skeletons and led to reconsideration of many of our old impressions of sauropods. The most famous recovered “detail” is Jack’s revision of the skull of Apatosaurus. For the better part of a century, the famous Yale mount of an Apatosaurus skeleton bore a Camarasaurus-like skull because of a dotted-in sketch made in 1883 by Marsh. Through examination of the original quarry maps and shipping manifests, Jack discovered a “accounting error” and eventually recapitated Apatosaurus with the correct, Diplodocus-like skull. In addition to his historical pursuits, Jack remains one of the foremost experts on sauropod dinosaurs. Jack was the first to summarize and synthesize skeletal , stratigraphic, taphonomic, and taxonomic data on the entirety of sauropod dinosaurs, a monumental effort that serves as a standard reference for any investigation into sauropods and also provides raw information for phylogenetic analyses of sauropod relationships . Incredibly, Jack managed this body of work while winning his bread as a theoretical physicist at Yale, Princeton, and Wesleyan. The conversation below recounts Jack’s formative years and early encounters as a precocious student, his service in the Second World War, and paleontology in the badlands of the western United States. We trace Jack’s interest in sauropods and delve into the some of the life experiences that solidified his position as one of our most celebrated colleagues. The conversation was recorded and transcribed from discussions with Jack McIntosh on 3 April 2004 (Middletown, Connecticut) and 8 November 2004 (Denver, Colorado). Material from the two interviews has been woven together for continuity, and technical terms and colloquial phrasings have been edited to render them accessible to a broader readership. The recording was transcribed by Carole Goodyear and Amanda Kealey. KCR: I love to hear the stories about how people get into paleontology. What sparked your interest in sauropods? Mcintosh: Well, I think it was the same way as most people. I think I was about six. My father took me to the Carnegie Museum. I saw the Diplodocus, flipped. From there on, it continued to be part of my life. JAW: So Jack, you wrote a famous letter at age thirteen or fourteen to [Richard] Lull. It seems you had already 327 a conversation with jack mcintosh Jeffrey A. Wilson and Kristina Curry Rogers developed a very academic interest in dinosaurs. How did that emerge? McIntosh: When I was a kid, I was sick most of the time. In the sixth grade I missed about one third of the year. When I was sick my uncle, who had gone to Yale and had taken a course under Lull, had the book Organic Evolution. He gave me that book to read, and that of course was very exciting. JAW: Your letter to Lull is pretty advanced for a 13 or 14 year old. You asked whether Cardiodon and Cetiosaurus should be the same thing,” and “What about Apatosaurus?” KCR: Had you already met Lull when you wrote to him, or did you write the letter without knowing him in advance? McIntosh: When you’re that age, you’re brash, you think you can do anything—you’re crazy! KCR: Did Lull write back to you? McIntosh: Well, he wrote me back and said, “I really don’t know that much about saurischians. Write to Gilmore.” JAW: Do you still have the copy of Lull’s letter? McIntosh: Oh of course, sure. And of course I have another one, which I cherish, that I got many, many years later from [Werner] Janensch. Well, it’s in German of course. KCR: Did you get to meet these paleontologists as a young kid? McIntosh: I...