Mary Dawson, curator of vertebrate paleontology and a fixture at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History for three decades, will retire as of Jan. 3.
 |
 |
|
Mary Dawson joined the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1962. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette) |
But that doesn't mean she'll stop working.
Dawson, 71, already has a research trip planned to Beijing next year and has applied for funding for excavations above the Arctic Circle in late summer.
Retirement, she said, means "no more committee meetings, no more task forces. ...I'll just keep the research going."
"I think we're likely to see her productivity actually increase," said K. Christopher Beard, who will assume her role as chief of the museum's vertebrate paleontology section.
During October's meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Dawson was presented the A.S. Romer-G.G. Simpson Medal, the group's highest honor.
Her pioneering field work above the Arctic Circle uncovered evidence that the area was a warm swamp 55 million years ago and that mammals from North America migrated to Europe over a land bridge. As China began to open itself to Western scientists in the past two decades, her connections with Chinese colleagues helped her and museum colleagues gain access to rich fossil fields there.
When Dawson joined the museum, vertebrate paleontology was a fairly small group of researchers. "Now we're as big, if not bigger, than any museum in the United States," with 10 full-time staff members, including four doctorate-level researchers, Beard said. "That's largely due to Mary's leadership."
Previous story: The bone collector / Mary Dawson, paleontologist extraordinaire, pursues clues to evolution while overseeing the Carnegie's fossil collection
