Jørn Harald Hurum (born November 4, 1967) is a Norwegian paleontologist and popularizer of science. He is a vertebrate paleontologist and holds an

Associate Professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

position at the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo. He has studied dinosaurs, primitive

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

s and

plesiosaur The Plesiosauria (; Greek: πλησίος, ''plesios'', meaning "near to" and ''sauros'', meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared ...

Media

Hurum is known as a popularizer of science with a high media profile. He is the author of the book ''Menneskets utvikling'' ("The Evolution of Man") and the host of the segment ''Jørns hjørne'' ("Jørn's Corner") on the popular-science program "Newton" on Norwegian television. He also co-hosts the radio program ''Hurum og Ødegaard'' ("Hurum and Ødegaard") with astrophysicist

Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard (born 6 May 1966) is a Norwegian astronomer formerly employed as a media contact at the University of Oslo's Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. He was the leader of the Norwegian Astronomical Society (2005–2008) ...

on Norwegian radio. In 2001, Hurum was awarded Oslo University's "Formidlingspris," an award for the popularization of science, which he shared with Hans Arne Nakrem and Geir Søli. He was awarded the prize again in 2009 for his work publicizing "Ida", the '' Darwinius'' find.

Discoveries

Hurum has done work on a wide range of vertebrate palaeontology, ranging from Mesozoic mammals, theropod dinosaurs and plesiosaurs from

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...

. In 2006 his team uncovered an enormous short-necked plesiosaur, the '' Pliosaurus funkei'', possibly the largest carnivore found to date. His main work continues to be in the field of plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs from Svalbard. In May, 2009, he announced the acquisition and scientific description of a 47-million-year-old, 95% complete skeleton of a primitive primate, ''

Darwinius masillae ''Darwinius'' is a genus within the infraorder Adapiformes, a group of basal strepsirrhine primates from the middle Eocene epoch. Its only known species, ''Darwinius masillae'', lived approximately 47 million years ago (Lutetian stage) based on ...

'', that had been in the private collection of an amateur fossil collector for 25 years. Hurum named the specimen "Ida", after his daughter.

Controversy

Some experts in the scientific community were critical of the 2009 media campaign Hurum orchestrated to publicize his find ''

''.

Matt Cartmill Matthew Cartmill is an American anthropologist and professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University, where he formerly served as Chair of Anthropology. Education and career Cartmill was educated at Pomona Colleg ...

, an anthropologist from Duke University, said "The P.R. campaign on this fossil is I think more of a story than the fossil itself". Hurum's reputation was further tarnished when it turned out that the fossil was not a "Revolutionary Scientific Find That Will Change Everything," as he had claimed in his press release, and that some of the key scientific claims he had made for ''

'' failed scientific scrutiny. Hurum was named a 2011 National Geographic Emerging Explorer.

References

External links

Curriculum

Hurum's publications, and press releases concerning his work
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hurum, Jorn 1967 births Living people Norwegian paleontologists Norwegian science writers University of Oslo faculty 20th-century Norwegian scientists 21st-century Norwegian scientists 20th-century Norwegian educators 21st-century Norwegian educators