with General George Sykes' division. He managed to escape and soon joined his command in the defense of Washington. He later participated in the Peninsular campaign and saw service in the battles of Gaines' Mill and Malvern Hill. During this campaign he contracted typhoid fever while at Harrison's Landing and was sent north on a transport. During the remainder of the war he performed hospital duty, mostly at Lovell Hospital at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and at Cleveland, Ohio. On March 13, 1865, he was given the Brevets of captain and major for faithful and meritorious service. The years following the war followed the pattern of frequent moves typical of junior medical officers of the day. He married Louisa Russell, daughter of Robert Russell of Cooperstown, on October 19, 1865 and took his bride to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, from where he was soon transferred to Fort Harker, near Ellsworth in Kansas. Louisa did not accompany him to the latter post, but joined him in 1867 just prior to an outbreak of cholera. She was one of the first civilians to develop the disease which killed her within a few hours on July 15 and soon claimed a toll of about 75 people at the fort. Paleontology Sternberg was promoted to captain on May 28, 1866 and was soon sent to Fort Riley, Kansas (December 1867). With troops from this post he took part (1868–69) in several expeditions against hostile Cheyenne Indians along the upper Arkansas River in Indian Territory and in western Kansas. Besides his military duties, Sternberg was also interested in fossils and began collecting leaf imprints from the nearby Dakota Sandstone Formation. Some of his specimens went back East where they were studied by the famous paleobotanist, Leo Lesquereux. Sternberg also collected vertebrate fossils, including shark teeth, fish remains and mosasaur bones, from the Smoky Hill Chalk and Pierre Shale formations in western Kansas, and sent the specimens back to Washington, D.C., where they were eventually curated in the United States National Museum (Smithsonian Institution). There they were studied and later described in publications by Joseph Leidy. The type specimen of the giant Late Cretaceous fish, Xiphactinus audax, was collected by Dr. Sternberg. His work was also credited by Edward D. Cope and Samuel W. Williston. Sternberg was also responsible for getting his younger brother, Charles H. Sternberg, started in paleontology. Charles would later credit his older brother for