K. Christopher Beard is an American
paleontologist
Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
, an expert on the primate fossil record and a 2000 MacArthur Fellowship "Genius" Award Winner. Beard's research is reshaping critical debates about the evolutionary origins of mammals, including primates, routinely questioning current thinking about their geographical origins. Dr. Beard is the former Curator of the
Carnegie Museum of Natural History
The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as CMNH) is a natural history museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded by Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1896.
Housing some 22 million ...
, and Mary R. Dawson Chair of Vertebrate Paleontology, at
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...
. He is currently Distinguished Foundation Professor, Senior Curator at the University of Kansas. He was co-author with
Dan Gebo about an extinct primate from China. Dr. Beard also authored the book The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes and Humans. Beard was also part of the research teams that discovered Teilhardina, the earliest primate ever found in North America, and Eosimias, one of the earliest higher primates yet discovered. He worked with NASA to scan a ''
Tyrannosaurus rex
''Tyrannosaurus'' is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' (''rex'' meaning "king" in Latin), often called ''T. rex'' or colloquially ''T-Rex'', is one of the best represented theropods. ''Tyrannosaurus'' live ...
'' skull. Beard received his PhD from the Functional Anatomy and Evolution Program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1989.
[http://www.carnegiemnh.org/science/default.aspx?id=17591]
Awards
* 2000
MacArthur Fellows Program
Works
''The hunt for the dawn monkey: unearthing the origins of monkeys, apes, and humans'' University of California Press, 2004,
"Mammalian Biogeography and Anthropoid Origins" ''Primate biogeography: progress and prospects'', Editors Shawn M. Lehman, John G. Fleagle, Springer, 2006,
"Basal Anthropoids" ''The primate fossil record'', Editor Walter Carl Hartwig, Cambridge University Press, 2002,
"Early Wasatchian Mammals From the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mississippi" ''Eocene biodiversity: unusual occurrences and rarely sampled habitats'', Editor Gregg F. Gunnell, Springer, 2001,
References
External links
"K. Christopher Beard" ''Scientific Commons''
''The Washington Post'', Apr 5, 1996
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beard, K. Christopher
American paleontologists
University of Pittsburgh faculty
MacArthur Fellows
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
American curators