Phillip J. Currie

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Phil Currie, born in Toronto, formerly the head of Dinosaur Research at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta, is now a researcher and prominent palaeontologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Over the last 25 years he has worked on fossil discovery in Mongolia, Argentina, Dinosaur Provincial Park, Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park, and many other locations.

His contributions to paleontology include synonymizing the genera Troödon and Stenonychosaurus in 1987 (with the former name taking precedence), and much work on the link between birds and dinosaurs. He was one of the first scientists to study the fossils of Archeoraptor, and was featured in a 1999 National Geographic cover story about it.

Currie is the foremost dinosaurian paleontologist in Canada (and has appeared on the cover of the Canadian edition of Time magazine), and is one of the most famous in the world. The festschrift Mesozoic Vertebrate Life: New Research Inspired by the Paleontology of Philip J. Currie, edited by Darren H. Tanke and Kenneth Carpenter, Indiana University Press, was published in his honor.

Currie became increasing skeptical of the orthodoxy that carnivorous dinosaurs were solitary animals. However their was no evidence for his hypothesis that they might have sometimes lived in packs. However he tracked down a site mentioned by Barnum Brown and there found 12 specimens of Albertosaurus.[1]

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