One of the more dashing personalities in American paleontology is Roland T. Bird. Bird had no formal education in paleontology—he simply enjoyed the work of collecting fossils, traveling throughout western North America on his Harley Davidson motorcycle searching for them.

Working closely with Barnum Brown, Bird played a key role in assuring the success of the excavations at Howe Quarry, Wyoming, one of the greatest deposits of dinosaur bones in the world. He is best remembered for discovering and excavating many famous dinosaur track sites in North America. Bird discovered, collected, and reconstructed the Glen Rose Trackway.