Charles Repenning

Who was Charles Repenning?

Charles Repenning was an American paleontologist and zoologist noted for his work on shrews, fossil rodents, modern pinnipeds and their extinct relatives, the Desmostylia. He identified and researched the Paleoparadoxia found during the excavation of Stanford Linear Accelerator at Stanford University in California, which was eventually reclassified as a distinct species, which was named in his honor. Repenning was the first paleontologist to identify fossils from the North Slope of Alaska as dinosaur bones.

He was a veteran of World War II, serving as an enlisted soldier in the 104th Infantry Division and spent time in a German prisoner-of-war camp. He was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

After the war, Repenning attended the New Mexico School of Mines and worked for the United States Geological Survey in Holbrook, Arizona, where he mapped the Navajo Reservation; Menlo Park, California, where he studied at the University of California at Berkley; and eventually Denver, Colorado, writing extensively on fossil and modern day mammals of many types, culminating in his work to create a bio-chronology based on microtine rodents.