Dale Russell | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1937-12-27)December 27, 1937 San Francisco,California, U.S. |
| Died | December 21, 2019(2019-12-21) (aged 81) |
| Citizenship | United States andCanada |
| Occupation | Professor |
| Employer | North Carolina State University |
Dale Alan Russell (27 December 1937 – 21 December 2019)[1] was an American-Canadian geologist and palaeontologist. Throughout his career Russell worked as the Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at theCanadian Museum of Nature,[2] Research Professor at the Department of Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (MEAS) atNorth Carolina State University, and Senior Paleontologist at theNorth Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Dinosaurs he has described includeDaspletosaurus andDromiceiomimus, and he was amongst the first paleontologists to consider an extraterrestrial cause (supernova, comet, asteroid) for theCretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.[1] Russell also helped lead theChina-Canada Dinosaur Project from 1986 to 1991.
In 1982, Russell created the "dinosauroid"thought experiment, which speculated an evolutionary path forTroodon if it had not gone extinct in theCretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago, and had instead evolved into an intelligent being. Russell commissioned a model of his dinosauroid by artist Ron Seguin, and the concept became popular. Various later anthropologists have continued Russell's speculations about intelligentTroodon-like dinosaurs, though they often find his original idea too anthropomorphic.[3]
