Matthew Carl Lamanna is a

paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

and the assistant curator of vertebrate paleontology 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 ...

, where he oversees the

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...

collection.

Education

Lamanna graduated from Hobart College in

Geneva, New York Geneva is a City (New York), city in Ontario County, New York, Ontario and Seneca County, New York, Seneca counties in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It is at the northern end of Seneca Lake (New York), Seneca Lake; all land port ...

in 1997. He received high honors in biology and geology. Lamanna went on to get his M.A. and Ph.D. in earth and environmental science from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

Personal Life

Lamanna is famously known to be related to renown musician, Jonathan 'Jon' Lamanna formerly of the band 'Cry to the Blind'.

Discoveries

Lamanna first gained fame for the 2000 discovery of ''

Paralititan ''Paralititan'' (meaning "tidal giant") was a giant titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur genus discovered in coastal deposits in the Upper Cretaceous Bahariya Formation of Egypt. It lived between 99.6 and 93.5 million years ago.Holtz, Thomas R. Jr. ...

'' in Egypt, called by some as the "largest dinosaur ever discovered". The

sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their b ...

was 80 feet long and weighed between 40 and 50 tons. The discovery was the feature of a 2-hour A&E documentary '' The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt''. Beginning in 2004, Lamanna began work on a series of digs in China. The result, first published in the journal ''Science'' in June 2006, was the discovery of '' Gansus yumenensis,'' a missing link in the early evolution of birds.

External links

Lamanna's CV at Carnegie Museum

“Remarkable Alum” entry at Hobart and William Smith Colleges website
– The Washington Post
Ducklike Fossil Points to Aquatic Origins for Modern Birds
– Scientific American American paleontologists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Scientists from New York (state) University of Pennsylvania alumni Hobart and William Smith Colleges alumni Waterloo, New York {{paleontologist-stub