Mary R. Dawson (February 27, 1931 – November 29, 2020) was a vertebrate paleontologist and curator emeritus at the

Carnegie Museum of Natural History The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as CMNH) is a natural history museum in the Oakland (Pittsburgh), Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded by List of people from the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, Pit ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

Education and career

Dawson was raised in

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

, received her undergraduate degree from Michigan State University, and received her

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

University of Kansas The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States. Two branch campuses are in the Kansas City metropolitan area on the Kansas side: the university's medical school and hospital ...

. She was

Curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh from 1972 until she retired in 2003, including serving as chair of the Earth Sciences Division from 1973 to 1997.

Research

Dawson's research has focused on the evolution of mammals, especially of

Cenozoic The Cenozoic Era ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterized by the dominance of mammals, insects, birds and angiosperms (flowering plants). It is the latest of three g ...

rodents Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia ( ), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are n ...

and

lagomorphs The lagomorphs () are the members of the taxonomic order Lagomorpha, of which there are two living families: the Leporidae (rabbits and hares) and the Ochotonidae (pikas). There are 110 recent species of lagomorph, of which 109 species in twelve ...

. She has also maintained an active research program at

Ellesmere Island Ellesmere Island (; ) is Canada's northernmost and List of Canadian islands by area, third largest island, and the List of islands by area, tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of , slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total ...

and other sites in the high Arctic which showed that tropical and subtropical animals lived inside the

Arctic Circle The Arctic Circle is one of the two polar circles, and the northernmost of the five major circle of latitude, circles of latitude as shown on maps of Earth at about 66° 34' N. Its southern counterpart is the Antarctic Circle. The Arctic Circl ...

during the exceptionally warm climates of the

Paleogene The Paleogene Period ( ; also spelled Palaeogene or Palæogene) is a geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Neogene Period Ma. It is the fir ...

geological period. Through this work, she and her collaborators discovered the first

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

s of

Tertiary Tertiary (from Latin, meaning 'third' or 'of the third degree/order..') may refer to: * Tertiary period, an obsolete geologic period spanning from 66 to 2.6 million years ago * Tertiary (chemistry), a term describing bonding patterns in organic ch ...

land animals that documented a migration route between

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

and

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. This migration route provided early support for the theory of

plate tectonics Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...

, which was only gaining wide acceptance in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2006 she disputed the

classification Classification is the activity of assigning objects to some pre-existing classes or categories. This is distinct from the task of establishing the classes themselves (for example through cluster analysis). Examples include diagnostic tests, identif ...

of the

Laotian rock rat The Laotian rock rat or ''kha-nyou'' (''Laonastes aenigmamus'', Lao: ຂະຍຸ), sometimes called the "rat-squirrel", is a species of rodent found in the Khammouan region of Laos. The species was first described in a 2005 article by Paulina ...

, arguing that it is a member of the

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Diatomyidae Diatomyidae is a family of hystricomorph rodents. It is represented by a single living species, '' Laonastes aenigmamus,'' native to Laos in Southeast Asia. Fossil species are known from the Oligocene and Miocene of Asia and eastern Europe. "La ...

, which had previously been believed to have gone extinct 11 million years ago.

Awards and honors

In 1992 Dr. Dawson became the first American woman to receive the

Romer-Simpson medal The Romer-Simpson Medal is the highest award issued by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology for "sustained and outstanding scholarly excellence and service to the discipline of vertebrate paleontology". The award is named in honor of Alfred S. R ...

, which is awarded for lifetime achievement in the field of vertebrate paleontology and considered the highest honor bestowed by the

Society of Vertebrate Paleontology The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) is a professional organization that was founded in the United States in 1940 to advance the science of vertebrate paleontology around the world. Mission and activities SVP has about 2,300 members inte ...

. Likewise she was only the second woman to serve as the Society's president in 1973–1974. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's Mary R. Dawson Predoctoral Fellowship Grant, which recognizes and supports graduate student research excellence, is named after her. In 1986, Dr. Dawson was awarded the Outstanding Service Award from the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of America for her service to the breed and the club.

Major Publications

*
Later Tertiary Leporidae of North America
' (1958) * ''Late Eocene rodents (Mammalia) from Inner Mongolia'' (1964) * ''Contributions in Quaternary vertebrate paleontology : a volume in memorial to John E. Guilday'' (1984, edited with Hugh H. Genoways) * Papers on fossil rodents in honor of Albert Elmer Wood (1989, edited by

Craig Call Black Craig Call Black (1932–1998) was an American paleontologist noted for his studies of the vertebrate mammals of the Ice Age. He served as the director of the Museum of Texas Tech University 1972-1975, Carnegie Museum of Natural History 1975-19 ...

) * Dawn of the age of mammals in Asia (1998, edited with K. Christopher Beard)
Paleogene rodents of Eurasia
(2003) * ''Fanfare for an uncommon paleontologist : papers in honor of

Malcolm C. McKenna Malcolm Carnegie McKenna (1930–2008) was an American paleontologist and author on the subject. Paleontologist McKenna began his paleontology career at the Webb School of California (grades 9-12) in Claremont, California, under noted paleontolo ...

'' (2004, edited with Jason A. Lillegraven)

References

External links

Biography from Pocantico Hills Central School TrowelBlazers profile Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Biography

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dawson, Mary American paleontologists American women paleontologists 2020 deaths 1931 births Michigan State University alumni Kent State University alumni Carnegie Museum of Natural History American women curators American curators Presidents of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology