John Ostrom, 77, of Litchfield, Connecticut, passed on July 16, 2005. John was born on February 18, 1928. Ostrom was born and raised in New York and spent his life trying to become like his father. He wanted to pursue the occupation involved in medicine, but upon reading the work of an American Paleontologist, George Gaylord Simpson, he changed his passion and mentality. At Union College, he earned a bachelor's degree in geology and biology but later enrolled at Columbia University. He also became a research assistant at the American Museum of Natural History and taught at Brooklyn College and Beloit College. After receiving a doctorate in vertebrate paleontology at Columbia, he was hired as an assistant professor of geology at Yale University and as an assistant curator of vertebrate paleontology at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. He was later made a full professor and curator at Yale in 1971. While conducting a dig in the Bighorn Basin of Montana, he discovered a fossilized claw of an undiscovered species of carnivorous dinosaur. He named the dinosaur that he found Deinonychus. In further research, he found that this dinosaur was upright and was warm-blooded. The fact that this dinosaur was warm-blooded changed the perception of dinosaurs as a whole. After reviewing a specimen of Arceopteryx at a museum in the Netherlands he brought the idea of birds evolving from therapod dinosaurs back to light. His research changed and revolutionized the idea of paleontology and created the "Renaissance of Dinosaurs." Do you remember those velociraptors from Jurassic Park, well those were based on what Mr. Ostrom told Stephen Speilberg (the director). This famous Paleontologist will not be forgotten, and his work will always be important.