Harley Garbani, a self-taught paleontologist known for his passion for hunting dinosaur bones, passed away on Thursday at the age of 88 in Hemet.
Garbani was a plumber by trade, but earned surprising recognition for discovering some of the world's most noteworthy dinosaur fossils.
He made his first fossil discovery at the age of 8. He discovered partial skulls of the youngest known Tyrannosaurus rex and the Triceratops.
Most of his important fossil finds have been put on display at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Berkeley-based University of California Museum of Paleontology and the Bozeman-based Museum of the Rockies.
Commenting about passionate fossil hunter Garbani, Director Luis Chiappe of the Natural History Museum's Dinosaur Institute said, "He didn't have any academic training in the field, and he didn't do any research. He was primarily a field person, and he made some truly unique discoveries."
Garbani was born September 19, 1922, in Los Angeles and migrated to the San Jacinto Valley in Riverside County at the age of 3.
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