BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) – Jack Horner, the paleontologist who discovered the world’s first dinosaur embryos, found that dinosaurs had nests and that they cared for their young, is leaving the Montana museum he spent decades filling with fossils from across the globe.
Horner, 69, Is one of the best known dinosaur researchers in the world. Michael Crichton based the character Alan Grant on Horner in the 1990 book “Jurassic Park,” and Steven Spielberg brought Horner on as a technical adviser on all of the “Jurassic Park” movies – and Horner did it without a college degree and with dyslexia.
From his base at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, and before that with Princeton University, Horner discovered a dozen dinosaur species, the first dinosaur eggs in the Western Hemisphere, and provided proof of the theory of their close relation to birds. He built the Museum of the Rockies from eight dinosaur specimens when he started working there 34 years ago to more than 35,000 today.
As he ponders a state of semi-retirement, he plans to turn his attention back to education by teaching a class on imagination and creative thinking at Chapman University in California.
His struggles with dyslexia caused him to flunk out of college multiple times and initially hindered his ability to raise money for research because the grant applications had to be signed by an advanced-degree holder. He still reads at a third-grade level, and claims to have written more books than he’s read.