Dale Alan Russell (27 December 1937 – 21 December 2019) was an American-Canadian geologist and palaeontologist. Throughout his career Russell worked as the Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at the

Canadian Museum of Nature The Canadian Museum of Nature (french: Musée canadien de la nature; CMN) is a national natural history museum based in Canada's National Capital Region. The museum's exhibitions and public programs are housed in the Victoria Memorial Museum Bui ...

, Research Professor at the Department of Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (MEAS) at

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universit ...

, and Senior Paleontologist at the

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (NCMNS) is the largest museum of its kind in the Southeastern United States. It is the oldest established museum in North Carolina, located in Raleigh. In 2013, it had about 1.2 million visitors, and i ...

. Dinosaurs he has described include ''

Daspletosaurus ''Daspletosaurus'' ( ; meaning "frightful lizard") is a genus of tyrannosaurid dinosaur that lived in Laramidia between about 79.5 and 74 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. The genus ''Daspletosaurus'' contains three species ...

'' and ''

Dromiceiomimus ''Dromiceiomimus'' is a genus of ornithomimid theropod from the Late Cretaceous (early Maastrichtian) of Alberta, Canada. The type species, ''D. brevitertius'', is considered a synonym of ''Ornithomimus edmontonicus'' by some authors, while other ...

'', and he was amongst the first paleontologists to consider an extraterrestrial cause (supernova, comet, asteroid) for the

Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event (also known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction) was a sudden mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, approximately 66 million years ago. With the ...

. Russell also helped lead the

China-Canada Dinosaur Project The China-Canada Dinosaur Project (Chinese: 中国-加拿大恐龙计划; Pinyin: ''Zhōngguó-jiānádà kǒnglóng jìhuà''; also known as ''Sino-Canadian Dinosaur Project'') was a six-year series of palaeontological expeditions carried out b ...

from 1986 to 1991. In 1982, Russell created the "

dinosauroid ''Stenonychosaurus'' (meaning "narrow claw lizard") is a genus of troodontid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta, Canada, as well as possibly the Two Medicine Formation. The type and only species, ''S. inequalis ...

thought experiment A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences. History The ancient Greek ''deiknymi'' (), or thought experiment, "was the most anci ...

, which speculated an evolutionary path for ''

Troodon ''Troodon'' ( ; ''Troödon'' in older sources) is a wastebasket taxon and a dubious genus of relatively small, bird-like dinosaurs known definitively from the Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous period (about 77 mya). It includes at least ...

'' if it had not gone extinct in the

66 million years ago, and had instead evolved into an intelligent being. Russell commissioned a model of his dinosauroid by artist Ron Seguin, and the concept became popular. Various later anthropologists have continued Russell's speculations about intelligent ''Troodon''-like dinosaurs, though they often find his original idea too anthropomorphic.Jeff Hecht (9 July 2007)
"Smartasaurus"
''Cosmos Magazine''. Retrieved 1 June 2017.

References

American paleontologists Canadian paleontologists 1937 births 2019 deaths North Carolina State University faculty Scientists from California People from San Francisco 20th-century American geologists 20th-century Canadian geologists 21st-century American geologists 21st-century Canadian geologists {{paleontologist-stub