Walter W. Granger
| Walter W. Granger | |
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American Museum party at Bone Cabin Quarry, Wyoming, 1899. Seated, left to right: Walter Granger, Professor H.F. Osborn (with 'Jack'), Dr. W.D. Matthew; standing, F. Schneider, Prof. R.S. Lull, Albert Thomson, Peter Kaisen.
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| Born |
November 7, 1872 Middletown Springs, Vermont, USA |
| Died | September 6, 1941 (aged 68) Lusk, Wyoming, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Paleontology |
| Institutions | American Museum of Natural History |
| Alma mater | Middlebury College (honorary doctorate, 1932) |
| Known for | Prolific collecting of fossil vertebrates in Wyoming, New Mexico, Fayum (Egypt), China and Mongolia. Dinosaur discoveries include Velociraptor, Oviraptor, and . |
Walter Willis Granger (November 7, 1872 – September 6, 1941) was an American vertebrate paleontologist who participated in important fossil explorations in the United States, Egypt, China and Mongolia.
Born in Middletown Springs, Vermont, Granger was the first of five children born to Charles H. Granger, an insurance agent and veteran of the American Civil War, and Ada Haynes Granger. Granger developed an early interest in taxidermy; and in 1890, at age 17, he obtained a job working as a taxidermist with a friend of his father's at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Working in the field with the museum's expeditions in the American West in 1894 and 1895, Granger became interested in hunting fossils. In 1896, he joined the museum's Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. In 1897, on an expedition to Wyoming, he discovered Bone Cabin Quarry near Laramie. Over the next eight years, the site yielded the fossils of 64 dinosaurs, including specimens of Stegosaurus, Allosaurus and Apatosaurus.
News of German and British vertebrate fossil discoveries in Egypt led Granger to embark in 1907 with his superior Henry Fairfield Osborn on the first American fossil hunt outside North America. The Fayum region of Egypt contained one of the most complete assemblages of Cenozoic animals yet found and yielded a collection of specimens that enhanced the museum's reputation as well as Granger's.
As assistant curator of the museum's Department of Vertebrate Paleontology, Granger was sufficiently free of administrative duties that for many years he could spend an average of five months a year in the field, mostly in the American West, as well as write two or three important papers each year. In 1921, he went to China and Mongolia as chief paleontologist of the museum's third expedition there. Under the direction of Johan Gunnar Andersson, Granger helped open and begin excavating the site at Zhoukoudian that yielded "Peking Man" (Homo erectus pekinensis). The initial discovery of a hominid tooth at Zhoukoudian was made in 1921 by another paleontologist, Otto Zdansky.
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