One of the most well-known fictional characters in history – Dr. Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones Jr. as adventurous archeologist in now five movies, countless video games and novels – is loosely based on the real-life naturalist and adventurer Roy Chapman Andrews.
Andrews was born on January 26, 1884, in Beloit, Wisconsin. As a child, he explored forests, fields, and waters nearby, developing marksmanship skills. He taught himself taxidermy and used funds from this hobby to pay tuition to Beloit College. After graduation, he attempted to get a job at the Natural History Museum in New York, but there were no science positions vacant at the time. However, Chapman responded that he was even willing to clean the floors if that could him bring into the museum. So he was hired as a janitor and assistant taxidermist, and every morning after mopping the floors of the building, he helped clean bones and mount skeletons in the taxidermy laboratory. During the next few years, he worked and studied simultaneously, earning a Master of Arts degree in mammalogy from Columbia University. Finally, he was granted a full-time job thanks to his incredible enthusiasm and in later years became even director of the museum.
In February 1907, he was sent on his first expedition. A whale was washed ashore on Long Island, and the museum hoped to recover the skeleton for display. Chapman and a colleague got to the site where they discovered that a storm was slowly, but incessantly, burying the large carcass under the sand. For two days, they battled against the storm, but only a week later, and with the help of some local fishermen, the skeleton was finally recovered.
Andrew then visited Indonesia, Japan and China, where he collected rare animal specimens. He then persuaded paleontologist and museum director Fairfield Osborn to organize an ambitious expedition to Asia, hoping to find there fossils of the early ancestors of mammals, including humans.
In 1916 Andrews and his team ventured for the first time into previously poorly mapped areas of Central Asia, deserts plagued by sandstorms, snakes, occasional blizzards and flash-floods, bandits, and a civil war.
One of the most important discoveries of the expedition was made by chance. Chapman got lost in the Gobi desert when the expedition’s photographer John B. Shackelfor stumbled over a cliff edge where he noted some fossils. They had discovered a site full of bones of dinosaurs and mammals, and even a large egg believed to belong to some unknown species of ostrich bird. Just a few hours after this discovery, the expedition was forced to turn back as a storm was approaching fast. Only years later, Andrews was able to return and start the first scientific excavations.
In the cliffs of red glowing sandstone, named appropriately by Chapman Flaming Cliffs, the expedition discovered what would become part of the history of paleontology: various previously unknown dinosaur species – like Protoceratops and Velociraptor – rare bones and skulls of Cretaceous mammals – like Zalambdalestes, Djadochtatherium and Deltatheridium – and also clusters of large fossil eggs. Only now Andrews realized that they were dinosaur eggs. Such fossils were extremely rare. Before this discovery, only one site with a single egg was known. Now there was evidence that dinosaurs laid many eggs at once in nests and maybe even cared for their young.
Roy Chapman Andrews was a gifted storyteller. He published various accounts of his five expeditions to Asia and loved to set up his image in the general public as a daredevil. In his 1935 book, appropriately titled “This Business of Exploring“, he wrote:
“I was born to be an explorer…There was never any decision to make. I couldn’t do anything else and be happy.”
There are various elements in the Indiana Jones movies resembling the life of Roy Chapman Andrews. Dr. Jones is introduced in the first movie, “The Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), venturing to Asia as Andrews did. Both are skilled horsemen. Jones most recognized attributes include a revolver and a fedora hat. Many photos of Andrew show him with a broad-rimmed hat. He loved to hunt animals for his collection with his rifle, and he used his pistols to defend himself from bandits.
In interviews, both movie producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg explained that the story and visuals are based on their memories of adventure shows and pulp magazine stories popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Many of these stories were based on the travel accounts of late 19th- and early 20th-century naturalists, including those by Andrews. With their discoveries and stories, they nurtured a love of the public for exotic lands and intrepid explorers, and years later would inspire the incredible adventures of Indiana Jones on the big screen.
“Always there has been an adventure just around the corner–and the world is still full of corners.” – R. C. Andrews