James A. Jensen

James Alvin Jensen (August 2, 1918 – December 14, 1998), was an American paleontologist. His extensive collecting program at Brigham Young University in the Utah-Colorado region which spanned 23 years was comparable in terms of the number of specimens collected to that of Barnum Brown during the early 20th century. He was given the name "Dinosaur Jim" during the media coverage of his activities. Perhaps his most significant contribution to paleontology was to replace the 19th-century web of external metal struts, straps and posts that had been used to mount dinosaurs with a system of supports which were placed inside of bones, which produced free-standing skeletons with few or no obvious supports.

He is credited with naming and describing Supersaurus (1985) and Torvosaurus (with Peter Galton, 1979).

Jensen was born in 1918 in Leamington, Utah and developed an interest as a child exploring the desert and mountains with his father. While working in the now-defunct mining town of Mercur, Utah, he met his future wife, Marie M. Merrell. Neither had finished high school, which limited their options. Casting about for ways to begin their life, they decided to take advantage of the Federal Homestead Act and settled in Seward, Alaska which was still an unpopulated frontier. They married in 1941, and identified the plot of land that they intended to homestead.

However, in anticipation of World War II, the U.S. Army moved into Seward in July, 1941, and started construction on Fort Raymond. The massive influx of military personnel forced many civilians, including them, to return to the "Lower 48". They settled in Salt Lake City, and had two sons. He went through a crash training program on the University of Utah campus to become a machinist and welder. Upon completing the brief program, he received an appointment as a civilian contractor from the federal government, then went to Hanford, WA to work on nuclear "Reactor B" pile of the Manhattan Project, after which he transferred to Pearl Harbor to work in the reconstruction. Jensen returned to Utah in 1945, where he worked at odd jobs such as washing machine repairman, creamery man, truck driver, ceramics, gunsmith, linoleum block printing, sculpting, welder, machinist, taxidermist, inventor, and writer. During this time he met Arnie Lewis who worked at the Utah Field House of Natural History. They became friends and Lewis hired him to mount several birds of prey, later moving to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. In 1951, Jensen and family went to Seward, Alaska where he worked the next five years as a dockside longshoreman.

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