Renowned paleontologist Horner to retire from MSU

Renowned Montana State University professor Jack Horner, who spent more than 40 years digging up dinosaur bones, especially around Rudyard, is retiring.

Horner, Montana University System regents professor of paleontology and curator of paleontology at Museum of the Rockies, is one of the world's leading experts in paleontology.

He will retireJune 30.

He began his career in 1971, and almost immediately started digging up bones on the the Dan and Lila Redding farm north of Rudyard, near the Canadian border, and elsewhere near the Hill County town.

Some of the dinosaurs are now featured in the Rudyard museum that was built in 2006.

Others are in the Museum of the Rockies and the Smithsonian Institution.

The Shelby-born Horner has brought distinction to MSU and the Museum of the Rockies, and he will be deeply missed, said Shelley McKamey, executive director of the Museum of the Rockies.

"During his 33-year tenure as curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, Jack and his team of staff and graduate students have amassed the largest collection of dinosaur fossils from the United States," she was quoted as saying in an MSU press release.

"He opened the science of paleontology to the general public and sparked the imagination of countless aspiring paleontologists."

McKamey said a public event celebrating Horner's career is being planned for early summer, with the date to be announced.

Horner is widely recognized as one of the world's foremost paleontologists and was a leader in the now-common theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded social creatures more like birds than cold-blooded animals like lizards.

He is also well-known for serving as a scientific consultant to the popular "Jurassic Park" movies directed by Steven Spielberg, and his TED Talk, "Building a Dinosaur from a Chicken," has been viewed more than 2 million times. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship "Genius Grant" award.

He loved to write and talk about his job in his home state.

"That's where I was born and raised, and that's where there are lots of places to look," he said.

"My job is to walk, ... I just walk and walk and walk, and I've walked in Romania, Mongolia, Tanzania - all these places to find dinosaurs.

"I usually work in Montana, that's where I was born," he said.

He especially enjoyed going to the Rudyard area, a region rich in dinosaur fossils.

"The people in Rudyard are very, very friendly, and I think they very much enjoy having us there, and we just have a generally good time there," he said.