Mary Dawson
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Dr. Mary Dawson is the curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pennsylvania and the chairperson of the Division of Earth Sciences. She has held the curator position since 1972.
Dr. Dawson was raised in Michigan and received her Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. During a research expedition to the Arctic in the 1970s and '80s she and her team discovered the first fossils of Tertiary land animals that documented a migration route between North America and Europe. This migration route provided evidence and support for the theory of plate tectonics.
In 1992 Dr. Dawson became the first American woman to receive the A.S. Romer-G.G. Simspon medal, considered the highest honor bestowed by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
In 2006 she disputed the classification of the Laotian Rock Rat, arguing that it is a member of the group Diatomyidae which had previously been believed to have gone extinct 11 million years ago.
