Charles H. (Charles Hazelius) Sternberg

Born in New York in 1850 and later raised in Kansas, Charles Hazelius Sternberg turned a childhood fascination with fossils into a long career as one of North America's best-known fossil collectors. He worked from the late 1870s into the 1920s, collecting specimens for leading figures of his time, including Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel C. Marsh, as well as for museums in the United States, Canada, and Britain.

Sternberg is remembered not just for the sheer number of fossils he found, but for the importance of many of them. He helped recover notable dinosaur material from the American West and Canada, including famous hadrosaur specimens, and became known for his skill in locating and preserving difficult finds in the field. He also wrote about his experiences, leaving behind vivid firsthand accounts of fossil hunting during a formative period in paleontology.

His influence lasted beyond his own expeditions. Sternberg became the patriarch of a family of fossil hunters, with his sons continuing the work and adding to the family's place in museum and scientific history. He died in 1943, after a life closely tied to the discovery of prehistoric life in North America.