Lawrence Lambe

Lawrence Morris Lambe, FRSC, paleontologist, geologist (born 27 August 1863 in Montreal, QC; died 12 March 1919 in Ottawa, ON). In 1897, Lawrence Lambe was the first person to officially look for dinosaur fossils in the modern-day Dinosaur Provincial Park area. His later work describing the specimens he found brought other paleontologists to the region, now understood to be one of the richest deposits of dinosaur fossils in the world. One genus of dinosaur, Lambeosaurus, and two species, Anodontosaurus lambei and Colepiocephale lambei, have been named in his honour, recognizing his significant contributions to paleontology. (See also Dinosaurs Found in Canada.)

Personal Life

Lawrence Lambe was born on 27 August 1863 in Montreal, Quebec, to William B. Lambe and Margaret Morris. His mother was the daughter of the Honourable William Morris, a justice of the peace and politician in Montreal, and his father was a lawyer who immigrated from England. Lambe was one of two boys in a family of seven children. In 1902, Lambe married Mabel Maud Schreiber.

Education and Early Career

Lawrence Lambe studied civil engineering at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, graduating in 1883. From a young age, he was interested in the military and briefly served as a lieutenant in the Governor General’s Foot Guards. After school, Lambe planned to become a civil engineer. He obtained an engineering position with the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in the Rocky Mountain Division; however, the job was interrupted when Lambe contracted typhoid fever. After Lambe recovered from the illness, the CPR offered him more work. Lambe rejected the offer, instead accepting his first position with the Geological Survey of Canada, beginning his lifelong career.

Field Work

At 22 years old, Lawrence Lambe accepted his first job with the Geological Survey of Canada as an artist and assistant to Dr. Joseph F. Whiteaves, an established paleontologist. Whiteaves trained Lambe in the subjects of paleontology and zoology.

In 1897, Lambe conducted fieldwork in southern Alberta, near what is now known as Dinosaur Provincial Park. He “descended Red Deer river, starting from the village of Red Deer,” Lambe wrote in a 1902 report, “and made collections…between Red Deer village and Willow creek, and from the Belly River series between Bull Pound creek and Dead Lodge cañon.” While others had discovered dinosaur fossils in Canada before him (including Joseph Burr Tyrrell, when, in 1884, he found an Albertosaurus skull near the town of Drumheller) Lambe was the first to visit modern-day Dinosaur Provincial Park with the intention of systematically collecting reptile fossils.

During the 1897 expedition, Lambe noted that the Belly River series, now known as the Dinosaur Park Formation, yielded the most fossils. For this reason, he returned to this specific area twice more, in 1898 and 1901. Alongside American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, Lambe published the results of these expeditions in 1902 in a paper titled “On vertebrata of the mid-Cretaceous of the North West Territory.” Among the findings described in this report were Centrosaurus apertus, a horned dinosaur Lambe originally called Monoclonius dawsoni, and Mesodma primaeva, a rodent-like mammal.

Later Career

In 1900, Lawrence Lambe was chosen to be the chief associate to Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, an American paleontologist working for both the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and the United States Geological Survey. Lambe later studied vertebrate paleontology under Osborn at Columbia University. In December 1903, Osborn resigned from the GSC in order to focus on his work with the United States Geological Survey. Upon resigning, he requested that his Canadian position be left to Lambe. Lambe began as a vertebrate paleontologist with the GSC shortly after the recommendation from Osborn was made.

In his last few years of work, Lambe’s research expanded beyond animals from the Cretaceuous period to include Triassic Rocky Mountains fishes, Devonian New Brunswick fishes, and various vertebrate wildlife of the Red Deer River valley of Alberta.