Mac Talks: First in a 10-Part Series

From the time seven-year-old Kristi Curry Rogers learned about legendary dinosaur-hunter Jack Horner, she knew she had found her calling with the dinosaurs. Now Macalester professor Curry Rogers is a vertebrate paleontologist whose focus is on dinosaur evolution and paleobiology. She holds joint appointments in the departments of geology and biology.

Curry Rogers has conducted field research in Madagascar, Zimbabwe, and Montana and often involves students in both her field and laboratory research. In 2001 she revealed that she had discovered a new dinosaur species in Madagascar, which she named Rapetosaurus krausei. In 2010 she was awarded more than $570,000 in a CAREER Grant from the National Science Foundation, the only faculty member in the nation that year to receive a CAREER grant in the area of sedimentary geology and paleobiology.

Prior to joining the Macalester faculty, she was director of paleontology at the Science Museum of Minnesota. In addition to her scholarly publications, she is often called upon to explain dinosaurs to non-scholars in documentary and popular television programs such as PBS’s Nova and The Shape of Life.

Her current research focuses on the evolutionary history of Titanosauria, the latest surviving of the long-necked sauropod dinosaurs.

MacTalks, a new Alumni College web series, gives alumni the opportunity to take ten minutes and re-engage with the Mac experience from wherever they are–on the metro, over their lunch break, or across the globe. A new session will be announced each month in MacWire.

October 3 2014

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