Charles Doolittle Walcott

Charles Doolittle Walcott (1850 to 1927) was an American paleontologist and science administrator who served as the third director of the United States Geological Survey and later as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1907 to 1927. Born in New York Mills, he left school at eighteen and became a commercial fossil collector, finding important trilobite beds before working for state paleontologist James Hall and then joining the Survey. He is best known for his 1909 discovery of the Burgess Shale in British Columbia, whose exceptionally preserved soft bodied fossils are among the oldest known. His fieldwork on Cambrian rocks and fossils also helped resolve questions about the age of rocks on the eastern edge of New York state.