Mignon Talbot

 

Mignon Talbot

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Mignon Talbot

1869–1950

Mignon Talbot was an educator and paleontologist. She was one of the first women to earn a Ph.D. in geology from Yale University. She was also the first woman to become a member of the Paleontological Society.

“‘Oh Ellen, come quick, come quick, I’ve found a real live fossil!”

Mignon Talbot to her sister Ellen, as quoted by Frances Lester Warner (1937) in “The lost dinosaur,” a chapter in On a New England Campus

Mignon was born in Iowa City, Iowa. She later went to college at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Her mentor at Ohio State, geologist Edward Orton, encouraged her to stay in paleontology. After graduating in 1892, Mignon taught physical geography in Columbus schools. She began her Ph.D. in geology at Yale University in 1903 and completed her degree in just one year.

Mignon spent the rest of her career as a geology and geography professor at Mount Holyoke, a women’s college in Massachusetts. Rather than publishing papers, Mignon devoted her time to teaching students and building the Geology Department’s collection, which included rocks, minerals, and dinosaur tracks. She also started a collection of invertebrate fossils. She took students on trips to view rock formations and look for fossils but believed that women should work in laboratories, museums, and offices. Like many scientists of her time, Mignon felt fieldwork was only appropriate for men.

Mignon was walking with her sister near Mount Holyoke in 1910 when she made an incredible discovery. By chance, Mignon spotted a dinosaur skeleton embedded in a sandstone boulder.

“It was pure accident. One day my sister and I were walking past the Boynton farm on the way to Holyoke. I said, ‘Why Ellen, look at that little hill! It’s just the place for a house.’

It looked like a hill from the road, but when we walked up to the top of it, we found it was only a shell, with a gravel pit where the rest of the hill had been. . . . At the bottom of the pit I saw two boulders of sandstone and other boulders of granite. On one of the sandstone pieces was a streak of white that looked like a pick mark. I was pretty sure it was only a pick mark, but I went down to see.

I went down to see. And I saw vertebrae, and I saw ribs, and I saw bones – and I said, ‘Oh Ellen, come quick, come quick, I’ve found a real live fossil!’

By that I meant that the fossil was the bones of the real creature, not just tracks. Many tracks had been discovered in the Connecticut valley, but few actual skeletons of dinosaurs. So I said that I had found a real live fossil, and she said, ‘Have you lost your mind?’”

— Mignon Talbot (as quoted by Warner 1937)

Mignon was the first woman to find a nearly complete dinosaur skeleton, which she described as Podokesaurus holyokensis in 1911. The specimen that she found was destroyed in a fire in 1916, and no other fossils of the dinosaur have ever been found. The fire also ruined much of the rest Mount Holyoke’s fossil collection. Afterwards, Mignon worked nearly single-handedly to rebuild and expand the geology collections.

Mignon retired in 1935 and died in 1950. In 2021, residents of Massachusetts selected Podokesaurus holyokensis to be the state dinosaur.

Podokesaurus holyokensis

Selected works by Mignon Talbot

Talbot, M. 1911. Podokesaurus holyokensis, a new dinosaur from the Triassic of the Connecticut Valley. American Journal of Science S4-31: 469–479. Link

Talbot, M. 1922. The Department of Geology. Mt. Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly 6: 128–132.

Biographical references & further reading

Berta, A., and S. Turner. 2020. Rebels, scholars, explorers: Women in vertebrate paleontology. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Contreras, C. 2021. Mass. makes its pick for state dinosaur: Podokesaurus holyokensis; Lewis files legislation. Milford Daily News, 4 February 2021. Link

Elder, E.S. 1982. Women in early geology. Journal of Geological Education 30: 287–293. Link

Haff, J.C. 1952. Memorial to Mignon Talbot. Geological Society of America Annual Report for 1951, pp. 157–158.

Letters from Gondwana [by fernwen]. 2014. Mignon Talbot and the forgotten women of paleontology. 13 October 2014. Link

Paleontological Research Institution. no date. Mignon Talbot and the discovery of Podokesaurus. PRI blog. Link

Stricker, B. 2017. Daring to dig : Adventures of women in American paleontology. PRI Special Publication No. 54. Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, New York.

Turner, S., C.V. Burek, and R.T. Moody. 2010. Forgotten women in an extinct saurian (man’s) world. In R.T.J. Moody, E. Buffetaut, D. Naish, and D.M. Martill, eds. Dinosaurs and other extinct saurians: A historical perspective. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 343: 111–153. Link

Warner, F.L. 1937. On a New England Campus. The University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Archive.org Link