Dr. Paul Sereno
Palaeontologist
Dr. Sereno studied art and biology at Northern Illinois University and earned a doctorate from Columbia University studying dinosaur fossils in far-flung collections in Asia. In 1987, he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he founded the Fossil Lab. His fieldwork began in the foothills of the Andes in Argentina, where his team discovered the first dinosaurs to roam the Earth some 230 million years ago. Later, on expeditions to Asia, Dr. Sereno unveiled India’s first predatory dinosaur skull. In Inner Mongolia, he discovered a herd of ornithomimid dinosaurs that died in their tracks, mired in mud 90 million years ago. His teams excavated more than one hundred tons of fossils in Africa beginning in the 1990s, bringing to light a menagerie of new Jurassic and Cretaceous species. In 2000, Dr. Sereno discovered a graveyard in the Sahara dating to before the pyramids, which contained the remains of the People of the Green Sahara. He founded science centers in Chicago and Niger to celebrate the wonders of deep time and pro- vide career opportunities in science. Dr. Sereno is a National Geographic Explorer. He is the author of stories in National Geographic and Natural History and the subject of many documentaries.