45 Years of Hunting Dinosaurs around the world

When 11-year-old Phil Currie decided he was going to be a palaeontologist when he grew up he had no idea that he would eventually become one of the world’s leading experts on all things dinosaurs.

He turned his childhood passion of hunting for dinosaurs into a career – at one point having collected enough samples that the Government of Alberta committed to building a new museum to house them. In 1985 his collection became part of the new Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology where he was appointed as ‘Curator of Dinosaurs’. After living in Drumheller for 23 years, he moved to the University of Alberta so he could train graduate students. 

Over the last four decades, Dr. Currie’s love of dinosaurs has taken him on field expeditions and research trips all over the world. He has personally named and described dozens of new species of dinosaurs (while also having 5 dinosaurs named after him). You could say that he “wrote the book on dinosaurs” because he did – The Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs to be specific. Dr. Currie’s reputation as the ‘dinosaur expert’ may precede him but his love of digging for dinosaurs remains, as does his passion for instilling this same enthusiasm in his students. 

Join us on November 13 as we welcome Dr. Currie for a one night only event. Learn from the expert himself as he takes us on a journey through the evolution of dinosaur studies, weaving in his personal reflections and experiences as he goes. 

This event is open to all.

The event is also available online. Please register to receive the link.

About the speaker:
Philip J. Currie was inspired as a child by a toy dinosaur in a cereal box and is now a leading Canadian paleontologist. Currie studied zoology at the University of Toronto, and then vertebrate paleontology at McGill, under the tutelage of Robert Carroll, himself a major figure in the study of extinct animals. While completing his doctorate, Currie became the curator in charge of dinosaurs at the Provincial Museum of Alberta in Edmonton.

Currie has specialized in fossils from Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park as well as other Cretaceous sites (dating from the latter part of the dinosaur age) around the world, and is particularly interested in the evolution and classification of carnivorous dinosaurs (theropods) and their living descendants, birds. Today, along with being an important figure in dinosaur science, Phil is also a professor at the University of Alberta, having championed important public courses such as Dino 101, an online course teaching a comprehensive overview of non-avian dinosaurs.