Karen Chin 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 ...

and taphonomist who is considered one of the world's leading experts in

coprolite A coprolite (also known as a coprolith) is fossilized feces. Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal's behaviour (in this case, diet) rather than morphology. The name is de ...

Biography

Chin loved studying living things as a child, and enjoyed memorizing the names of species that she read about. As a college student, she worked as a nature interpreter for the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propert ...

. When Chin was in graduate school at Montana State University, studying modern grasslands, she took a job at the Museum of the Rockies. There Chin worked with Jack Horner and preparing fossils from the

Two Medicine Formation The Two Medicine Formation is a geological formation, or rock body, in northwestern Montana and southern Alberta that was deposited between and (million years ago), during Campanian (Late Cretaceous) time. It crops out to the east of the Rocky M ...

for study. She began by slicing newly unearthed

maiasaura ''Maiasaura'' (from the Greek ''μαῖα'', meaning "good mother" and ''σαύρα'', the feminine form of ''saurus'', meaning "reptile") is a large herbivorous saurolophine hadrosaurid ("duck-billed") dinosaur genus that lived in the area cur ...

bones for Horner to study with a microscope. Among the fossil were eggs and nests and unusual "blobs" that had not yet been identified. Chin asked to be the one to study these fossils and her research would confirm her hypothesis that they were coprolites. This experience was so positive that Chin says it gave her "fossil fever" and she turned her attention to studying fossils. She notes that due to her gender and racial identity, she is unusual in her field, saying: Chin is a professor at the

University of Colorado, Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sys ...

, and Curator of Paleontology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.

Selected publications

* Chin, Karen; Feldmann, Rodney M.; Tashman, Jessica N. "Consumption of crustaceans by megaherbivorous dinosaurs: dietary flexibility and dinosaur life history strategies". Scientific Reports. 7. * Chin, K., Hartman, J.H., and Roth, B. 2009. Opportunistic exploitation of dinosaur dung: fossil snails in coprolites from the Upper Cretaceous

of Montana. ''

Lethaia ''Lethaia'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal of Earth science, covering research on palaeontology and stratigraphy. Now published by Wiley-Blackwell, it was originally published by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. I ...

'' 42: 185–198. * Chin, K., Bloch, J.D., Sweet, A.R., Tweet, J.S., Eberle, J.J., Cumbaa, S.L., Witkowski, J., and Harwood, D.M. 2008. Life in a temperate polar sea: a unique taphonomic window on the structure of a Late Cretaceous Arctic marine ecosystem. ''

Proceedings of the Royal Society B ''Proceedings of the Royal Society'' is the main research journal of the Royal Society. The journal began in 1831 and was split into two series in 1905: * Series A: for papers in physical sciences and mathematics. * Series B: for papers in life s ...

'' 275: 2675–2685. * Tweet, J.S., Chin, K., Braman, D.R., and Murphy, N.L. 2008. Probable gut contents within a specimen of ''

Brachylophosaurus canadensis ''Brachylophosaurus'' ( or ; meaning "short-crested lizard", Greek ''brachys'' = short + ''lophos'' = crest + ''sauros'' = lizard, referring to its small crest) was a mid-sized member of the hadrosaurid family of dinosaurs. It is known from sev ...

'' (Dinosauria: Hadrosauridae) from the Upper Cretaceous Judith River Formation of Montana. ''

PALAIOS ''PALAIOS'' is a bimonthly academic journal dedicated to the study of the impact of life on Earth history, combining the fields of palaeontology and sedimentology. It has been published by the Society for Sedimentary Geology since its inception i ...

'' 23: 625–636. * Chin, K. 2007. The paleobiological implications of herbivorous dinosaur coprolites from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana: why eat wood? ''Palaio''s 22: 554–566. * Chin, K., and Bishop, J. 2007. Exploited twice: bored bone in a theropod coprolite from the Jurassic Morrison Formation of Utah, U.S. In: Bromley, R.G., Buatois, L.A., Mángano, M.G., Genise, J.F., and Melchor, R.N. ds. ''Sediment-Organism Interactions: A Multifaceted Ichnology''. ''

SEPM The Society for Sedimentary Geology is an international not-for-profit, scientific society based in Oklahoma. It is commonly referred to by its acronym SEPM, which refers to its former name, the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists. ...

Special Publications'', v. 88, pp. 377–385. * Chin, K., Tokaryk, T.T., Erickson, G.M., Calk, L.C., 1998, A king-sized theropod coprolite, ''Nature'' v. 393, pp. 680–682.

References

American paleontologists Women paleontologists Living people 20th-century births Date of birth missing (living people) Taphonomists Year of birth missing (living people) American people of Chinese descent African-American scientists 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people {{Paleontologist-stub