B.S., Zoology, Western Illinois University.

Visits to Field Museum when I was young cemented my fascination with the field of paleontology. Undergraduate training in zoology and geology helped prepare me for research in graduate school which combined vertebrate paleontology and structural geology. I studied fossil mammals from a geologically complex portion of "badlands" in South Dakota. What started out 30 million years ago as simple "layer-cake geology" has become confused due to extensive faulting caused by the Black Hills Uplift and a subsurface feature, the Chadron Arch. Unraveling the structural geology of the area was an interesting and necessary component of my research. It allowed me to accurately map the area and assemble a stratigraphic column of the many layers from which I was collecting fossils. I used data from the field to identify the primary direction of movement on the faults, as well as data from satellite photos which showed large-scale features related to the faulting. The faulting turned out to be a combination of ancient movements in one direction followed by a reversal of movement resulting in the present conditions. Following this research, I was able to accurately collect fossils from this complex but paleontologically rich set of rocks and assemble a list of fossil mammals longer than any previously published from the Whitneyan Land Mammal Age.

The laboratory component of this research in 1979 led to a three-year position in the Field Museum preparation labs. In 1981 I took over management of the prep labs, a position I held until 2002. In 1990 I took on the additional responsibility of overseeing the vertebrate paleontology research collections as Collections Manager. Since 2002 I have focused entirely on this area in the Geology Department. Our research collections are used by researchers inside and outside the museum. The search for fossils has resulted in my participation in a wide variety of field projects. In the last ten years I've been on expeditions looking for fossil mammals in the Chilean Andes in 1993, 1997, and most recently the Chilean Altiplano in 2004. In 1993 I worked with Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago looking for dinosaurs in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1995 I collected fossil fish in Wyoming with Lance Grande. I've been a member of John Flynn's team in the Triassic and Jurassic of Madagascar. We began in 1996 and have mounted six expeditions looking for dinosaurs and mammal-like reptiles there. I also made a seventh trip teaching a preparation course at the University of Antananarivo.