Charming the Bones

A Portrait of Margaret Matthew Colbert

Ann Brimacombe-Elliot

Born in 1911 to an unconventional, free-spirited artist mother and an eminent paleontologist father, Margaret Matthew chose a career as an artist specializing in restorations of extinct animals. She began her career at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City drawing fossil bones, and there she met her husband, the noted paleontologist Edwin (Ned) Colbert.

Charming the Bones portrays Margaret’s life as the wife of a famous man and the mother of five sons and, later in her life, as a respected restoration artist, illustrator, and sculptor.

Margaret Matthew Colbert’s paintings, drawings, and sculptures grace museums worldwide and enable the general public, as well as professional paleontologists, to visualize extinct creatures.