![]() Like a certain someone, Andrews had a very famous fear If Coy had to explain what made Andrews so successful, it’d be “a combination of personal drive, personality, and being of a particular moment in time.” Andrews’s heyday coincided with the first commercial automobiles, portable (albeit clunky) cameras, and broadcast radio, where he hosted a popular show called “Hunting the Great Invisible.” # All of the above had Andrews ripe for stardom. He was in the right place at the right time It was named Proceratops andrewsi after its discoverer. “They were found with the bones of a distant relative of Triceratops, a four-legged animal about the size of a full-grown hog,” explains Clive Coy, palaeontologist and avid collector of all things Andrews. It was in Mongolia, where he made the discovery of a lifetime: fossilized dinosaur bones and eggs in nests that proved dinosaurs laid eggs. ![]() With his new wife, photographer Yvette Borup, in tow, Andrews went on expeditions in Asia. While Andrews first love was mamalogy, his next was palaeontology. “Nobody had done that before.” He proved dinosaurs hatched from eggs-and got a dino named for him “He was out there taking the first live-action photos of whales,” says Bausum. Andrews brought with him cutting-edge technology in the form of a cumbersome camera. First, closer to home, he dug a 54-foot right whale out of ice in Long Island, before traveling to Korea to research his thesis on the gray whale-thought to likely be extinct. In lieu of a salary, Andrews convinced his bosses to fund his first proper expeditions on whales. “Those floors were walked on by my scientific gods,” he said looking back, so “they were not ordinary floors and I didn’t mind scrubbing them.” # (Over the course of thirty years, Andrews worked all the way up the ladder to become the museum director himself.) # He found the “extinct” gray whale was alive and well And so Andrews got his first gig as a janitor washing floors, later getting his masters in mammalogy from Columbia University. With neither an applicable degree nor experience beyond taxidermy, he begged the museum director for any job available. Immediately after graduating in 1906, Andrews traveled to New York City determined to work at the American Museum of Natural History. He talked himself into a gig at the American Museum of Natural History…washing floors I maintain that accident helped to remind Andrews all the time about risk, that his adventures came with a cost,” Bausum says. “He was a meticulous planner who prepared for every possible eventuality. ![]() “He had muscle cramps and sunk like a stone.” According to Bausum, deeply traumatized and depressed, Andrews lost weight and his hair fell out, but he ultimately recovered with a new obsession with safety. While canoeing together on ice-cold Rock River in March, says Bausum, “Monty dropped his paddle overboard and lunged for it, which tipped the boat.” While Andrews made his way to shore, he turned back to see his friend drowning. While at Beloit College, Andrews befriended an instructor named Montague White. “He became a superb writer and communicator who could talk his way into-and out of-anything.” A friend’s untimely death influenced his work from then on “You’d think he take biology or some kind of science, but he actually studied English, which eventually served him very well,” says Bausum. At Beloit College, Andrews chose a surprising topic of study. First and foremost a naturalist, Andrews was a self-taught taxidermist who helped pay for his college tuition by selling animals he’d shot and stuffed. From Shutterstock He was a mediocre student who began without any official scientific trainingīorn in Beloit, Wisconsin in 1884, Andrews, according to Bausum, was an ever-curious but easily distractible student who had impeccable aim with a shotgun (a gift from his father at the tender age of nine).
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