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OCTOBER 2004

Paleontologist Mark A. Norell: Remains Make His Day
by Jan Aaron

Even as a kid, Mark A. Norell was a collector. “I went for bugs, rocks, even old bottles,” he said, during an interview in his spacious office at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Now, as chairman and curator of AMNH’s Division of Paleontology, Dr. Norell specializes in researching the evolutionary relationship between small meat-eating dinosaurs and present-day birds. He’s a collector still of remains from remote places. Dr. Norell also will curate the AMNH’s landmark exhibition “Dinosaurs Alive: Ancient Fossils, New Ideas.” Opening May 14, 2005, the show will shed new light on dinosaur traits and behavior.

Dr. Norell, 47, recalls a California childhood with supportive parents (his father was an architect who loved science). “When I was 12 or 13, I accompanied scientists from the Los Angeles County Museum to the Mojave desert on research expeditions,” he added. He earned a Masters in biology in San Diego, and came to AMNH in 1989 from Yale where he was a lecturer in biology. Dr. Norell earned his Ph.D. in biology at Yale in 1988, where, since 1991, he has been an adjunct assistant professor of biology. He has this advice to students considering careers like his: get really great grades, attend a great grad school, and get a well-balanced education. “Study math, physics, computer science, photography, languages,” he said. “The more you know the more it can help you,” he added.

“You’re in for nine or more years of school,” he said. “You’ll be in your thirties before you get a job. And you’ll never get rich being a paleontologist,” he added. (Salaries start around $30,000-$35,000.) Happily, the field welcomes both women and men. It’s hard work, too. Dr. Norell speaks of his experiences as one of the team leaders of the joint AMNH/Mongolian Academy of Sciences expedition in the Gobi Desert, now in its 14th year. You will dig under the sun, sleep in on the ground and cook on primitive stoves. “Mexican sometimes,” he said, grinning. Dangers include close encounters with scorpions and serpents.

Still expeditions can yield spectacular discoveries. Through well-preserved fossils in Mongolia, Dr. Norell and his team have generated new ideas about bird origins and the groups of dinosaurs to which modern birds are most closely related. Dr. Norell was on a 1993 Gobi team that discovered Ukhaa Tolgod, the world’s richest vertebrate fossil site, dating from the Cretaceous. Some of his other discoveries are: the primitive avialian Mononykus, the first embryo of a meat-eating dinosaur ever uncovered, and an Oviraptor found nesting on a brood of eggs. The Oviraptor find is the first fossil to show definitive evidence of parental care among dinosaurs. In addition, it reveals behavioral similarities between extinct dinosaurs and modern birds to reinforce their evolutionary link. Dr. Norell was on the team in northeastern China that discovered two 120-million year-old dinosaur species, both of which show unequivocal evidence of true feathers. Want to learn more? The museum offers a wealth of scientific research programs for people of all ages, from preschoolers to seniors.#

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