K. Christopher Beard is an American paleontologist, 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. [1] Dr. Beard is the former Curator of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, [2] and Mary R. Dawson Chair of Vertebrate Paleontology, at University of Pittsburgh. [3] He is currently Distinguished Foundation Professor, Senior Curator at the University of Kansas. [4] He was co-author with Dan Gebo about an extinct primate from China. [5] Dr. Beard also authored the book The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes and Humans. [1] 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. [1] He worked with NASA to scan a Tyrannosaurus rex skull. [6] Beard received his PhD from the Functional Anatomy and Evolution Program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1989. [1]
Awards
Works
- The hunt for the dawn monkey: unearthing the origins of monkeys, apes, and humans, University of California Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-520-23369-0
- "Mammalian Biogeography and Anthropoid Origins", Primate biogeography: progress and prospects, Editors Shawn M. Lehman, John G. Fleagle, Springer, 2006, ISBN 978-0-387-29871-9
- "Basal Anthropoids", The primate fossil record, Editor Walter Carl Hartwig, Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-521-66315-1
- "Early Wasatchian Mammals From the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mississippi", Eocene biodiversity: unusual occurrences and rarely sampled habitats, Editor Gregg F. Gunnell, Springer, 2001, ISBN 9780306465284
References
- ^ a b c d Science
- ^ "CMNH Vertebrate Paleontology: K. Christopher Beard". Archived from the original on 2010-07-03. Retrieved 2010-04-22.
- ^ "People | Department of Geology and Environmental Science | University of Pittsburgh | University of Pittsburgh".
- ^ "K. Christopher Beard | Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology". eeb.ku.edu. Archived from the original on 2014-05-22.
- ^ "Newly discovered fossils from China shed light on common ancestry of monkeys, apes and humans". Archived from the original on 2010-04-10. Retrieved 2010-04-22.
- ^ "NASA - No Bones About It: NASA Analyzes Prehistoric Predator from the Past".
External links
- "K. Christopher Beard", Scientific Commons
- "Fossil May Represent New Branch of Primates' Family Tree", The Washington Post, Apr 5, 1996
