Philip J. Currie


Philip John Currie is a Canadian palaeontologist and museum curator who helped found the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta and is now a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In the 1980s, he became the director of the Canada-China Dinosaur Project, the first cooperative palaeontological partnering between China and the West since the Central Asiatic Expeditions in the 1920s, and helped describe some of the first feathered dinosaurs. He is one of the primary editors of the influential Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, and his areas of expertise include theropods, the origin of birds, and dinosaurian migration patterns and herding behavior. He was one of the models for palaeontologist Alan Grant in the film Jurassic Park.

Biography

Currie received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto in 1972, a Master of Science degree from McGill University in 1975, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in biology from the same institution in 1981. His master's and PhD theses were on synapsids and early aquatic diapsids respectively.
Currie became curator of earth sciences at the Provincial Museum of Alberta in Edmonton in 1976 just as he began the PhD program. Within three seasons he had so much success at fieldwork that the province began planning a larger museum to hold the collection. The collection became part of the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, which was completed in 1985, and Currie was appointed curator of dinosaurs.
In 1986, Currie became the co-director of the joint Canada-China Dinosaur Project, with Dale Russell of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and Dong Zhiming of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing.

Contributions to palaeontology

Over the last 25 years he has worked on fossil discovery in Mongolia, Argentina, Antarctica, Dinosaur Provincial Park, Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park, and many other locations.
His contributions to palaeontology include synonymising the genera Troodon and Stenonychosaurus in 1987 and later reversing this in 2017. The similarities between troodontids and birds made him a major proponent of the theory that birds are descended from dinosaurs.
As part of the joint China-Canadian Dinosaur Project he helped describe two of the first dinosaur specimens from the lagerstätten of the Liaoning in China that clearly showed feather impressions: Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx. In contrast with the 1996 discovery of Sinosauropteryx, which only showed the impression of downy filaments, these were indisputably feathers. This not only helped cement the theory that birds are descended from dinosaurs, but indicated that many dromaeosaurids were feathered. He was later featured in numerous popular articles and documentaries.
In 1997, Currie teamed up with Microsoft's Chief Technical Officer Nathan Myhrvold to create a computer model demonstrating that diplodocids could snap their tails like whips, and create small sonic booms. He was involved in exposing a composite specimen that had been the subject of the 1999 National Geographic "Archeoraptor" scandal.
Currie became increasingly sceptical of the orthodox belief that large carnivorous dinosaurs were solitary animals, but there was no evidence for his hypothesis that they may have hunted in packs. However, circumstantial evidence came when he tracked down a site mentioned by Barnum Brown that featured 12 specimens of Albertosaurus from various age groups.
In 2015, Currie contributed to a comprehensive revision of the phylogenetic relationships of ankylosaurid species.

Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum

In 2015, the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum was opened in Wembley, Alberta. It is located about a 15-minute drive west of Grande Prairie, and about northwest of Edmonton. The museum was designed by Teeple Architects, and has won several awards. It celebrates the Pipestone Creek bone bed, one of the world's richest dinosaur-bearing bone beds.

Personal life

Currie is a lifelong fan of science-fiction and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He is married to the Danish palaeobotanist and palynologist Eva Koppelhus, and has three sons from a previous marriage.

Awards and recognition

Dinosaur species named in honour of Currie include Quilmesaurus curriei, Epichirostenotes curriei, Teratophoneus curriei, Philovenator curriei, and Albertavenator curriei.

Selected works

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