Charles Repenning

Charles Albert Repenning (August 4, 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois – January 5, 2005 in Lakewood, Colorado) 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.

Military service

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.

Education and career

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 Berkeley; 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.

Private life

Repenning was known as a story teller and always began his childhood stories with 'When I was a little girl...'. He once found a guy sitting on the top of a hill in the desert who turned out to be a Civil War soldier who had desiccated rather than decayed. He was also a source of entertainment to his neighbors on more than one occasion. He would occasionally bury zebra, elephant, and tiger carcasses in the back yard in order to study their bones.