Handel Tong Martin immigrated to the United States from England and settled in Logan County, Kansas, in 1886. He began col¬lecting fossils from the Smoky Hill Chalk in 1887. Over the years, Martin collected in Kansas for O. C. Marsh at Yale University, and later, at the American Museum of Natural History, learned how to mount the bones of vertebrate fossils for exhibition. He began working at the University of Kansas in 1896 as the chief assistant and preparator for Samuel Williston, and continued to collect in the Niobrara Chalk and other more recent formations in west¬ern Kansas. After Williston left the University, Martin made and important expedition to South America where he made a large collection. When the University wouldn't pay his expenses, he recovered them by selling off a major portion of the most important specimens, but a major collection still remains at the University of Kansas. He also made important collections in the John Day region of Oregon, the Oligocene and Miocene of Colorado and the Eocene of Wyoming. The collections in Colorado were in an area developed by Martin for the American Museum of Natural History in the 1890's. One of Martin's most important contributions was the development of the Late Miocene Rhino Hill and Edson quarries in Western Kansas. Years later, during a period of severe budget problems at the University, he made an arrangement to sell duplicates of specimens that he collected to other museums. This supplemented his salary and is the source of the mounted Hesperornis from the Kansas chalk in the Smithsonian and important South American collections in several museums including the London Museum of Natural History. The largest collection Martin made was from Miocene deposits at Rhi¬noceros Hill in western Kansas. Although H.T. Martin had little formal education, he was curator of fossil vertebrates at the University of Kansas from 1912 to until his death in 1931.