Doctor Phillip J. Currie

Born

1949-03-13

Birthplace

Brampton, Ontario, Canada

Biography

Philip John Currie AOE FRSC (born March 13, 1949) is a Canadian paleontologist and museum curator who helped found the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta and is now a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In the 1980s, he became the director of the Canada-China Dinosaur Project, the first cooperative paleontological partnering between China and the West since the Central Asiatic Expeditions in the 1920s, and helped describe some of the first feathered dinosaurs.[1][2] He is one of the primary editors of the influential Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs,[3] and his areas of expertise include theropods (especially Tyrannosauridae), the origin of birds, and dinosaurian migration patterns and herding behavior.[4] He was one of the models for paleontologist Alan Grant in the film Jurassic Park.[5]