“In the [first] fifteen years [of field work], I can remember just ten times when I had really narrow escapes from death. Two were from drowning in typhoons, one was when our boat was charged by a wounded whale, once my wife and I were nearly eaten by wild dogs, once we were in great danger from fanatical lama priests, two were close calls when I fell over cliffs, once was nearly caught by a huge python, and twice I might have been killed by bandits.”
Roy Chapman Andrews (1884–1960) loved adventure, danger, and exploration, as evident from the above quote. Growing up in Beloit, Wisconsin, he went on solo hunts with a single-barrel shotgun that he received when he was 9. Often what he killed, he taxidermized, having studied William Hornaday’s “Taxidermy and Home Decoration.” He soon made a business out of taxidermy, which paid his way to Beloit College, where he earned an English degree in 1906.
Obsessed with all things paleontology, Andrews traveled to New York City to meet Hermon Bumpus, director of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and requested a job. Bumpus informed him that there were no openings, to which he responded that someone must mop the floors. Bumpus hired him to mop the floors, but also to assist James Clark, the museum’s taxidermist.
Clark and Andrews became fast friends and were sent on an expedition—Andrews’s first—to collect and then assemble the remains of a North American right whale that had washed ashore on Long Island. Braving brutal conditions of rain, snow, and strong winds in 20-below-zero temperatures, the two completed the project.
The Great Expeditions
Before World War I, Andrews was being sent much further than the shores of New York. He was sent across the world to the then-Dutch East Indies as a naturalist, where he would spend several years. While World War I was ongoing, Andrews conceived an idea that would cater directly to Henry Osborn, the president of the AMNH. Osborn believed that Asia was where man originated.Andrews suggested that he could “reconstruct the whole past history of the Central Asian plateau” through the collection of fossils. After raising the money for what became his Asiatic Zoological Expeditions, he set off on the expedition, and by its end―though he didn’t discover early man―he did collect about 2,100 mammals, 800 birds, and 200 reptiles and amphibians for the museum.
After these expeditions (there were two), he led five expeditions (in 1922, 1923, 1925, 1928, and 1930) into the Gobi Desert. No stranger to harsh conditions, Andrews and his team battled sandstorms, ice storms, bandits, and an ongoing civil war in order to send back thousands of fossil specimens to the AMNH. During his expeditions, he made three of the most important paleontological finds: the fossil remains of a velociraptor; dinosaur eggs, which proved dinosaurs were oviparous; and the fossil of the first discovered Protoceratops, which was named “Protoceratops andrewsi” in his honor.
In 1934, he was named president of the AMNH, a role which he didn’t enjoy, going so far as to label himself in his autobiography as “a square peg in a round hole.” It was far less his role behind the desk at the AMNH and far more his role as a great explorer that he’s considered the inspiration behind the fictional archaeologist Indiana Jones. Andrews’s fedora, revolver, rugged good looks, incessant adventurous spirit, and numerous close shaves with death are what made him the prototype for the fictional American icon.
