Carnegie Museum paleontologist to lecture at NIU

Christopher Beard, one of the country’s top paleontologists and a winner of the coveted MacArthur Fellowship, will visit NIU for two public lectures.

Beard serves as a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. He will deliver his first lecture, titled “The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes and Humans,” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 8, in Room 204 of DuSable Hall.

Beard also will lecture on “Biogeography and Early Primate Evolution” at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 9, in Room 206 of the Stevens Building.

Beard has worked closely in the past with NIU anthropologist Dan Gebo.

In 1996, while investigating a limestone quarry in China, the researchers discovered the fossils of Eosimias – a 45 million-year-old, thumb-length primate. These fossils not only represent the smallest known primates, with one species estimated to have weighed only 10 grams, but are also the ancestors of all higher primates. The discovery was hailed as filling a gap between primitive primates and the earliest monkeys, apes and humans.

Beard also has conducted fossil-collecting expeditions to the Wind River, Big Horn and Washakie basins of Wyoming; the San Juan Basin of New Mexico; and eastern Mississippi, where he unearthed the fossils of Coryphodon, a hippo-like animal that lived 58 million years ago. He has led or been involved in international expeditions to China, Kenya, Malaysia, Burma and Indonesia.

Beard was awarded the MacArthur fellowship in 2000. The fellowships, accompanied by stipends of $500,000 each, are awarded annually to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.

2-28-05