Featured Scientists

The Whole World at his FingertipsWhen we filmed Evolutionary Biologist Geerat (Gary) Vermeij for Shape of Life we were awed by how he could tell us so much about a shell by feeling the shape, the texture, the bumps and even the repairs. Blind since age three, Gary studies the form and function of molluscs in a completely unique way – using his figertips. He says his parents encouraged him to explore the natural world. His blindness was not a disability in exploring the world around him; it made him sharpen his other senses.  

Professor and Department Chair, Earth & Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa CruzLike so many kids Matthew loved dinosaurs when he was growing up in Vancouver, B.C. It wasn’t a direct route from “dinos” to his current career, though. He was lucky enough to take a geology class in the 12th grade and discovered he was fascinated by fossils and rocks and geology. And, like many future paleontologists, Matthew enjoyed the outdoors, boy scouts and hiking. In college he liked chemistry and geology but wasn’t thinking paleontology until he took a class in it and thought: “I can do this!” 

Dr. Kristi Curry Rogers studies dinosaur evolution and paleobiology, which means she spends a lot of time out in the field looking for dinosaur fossils — from Montana to Madagascar. She is a vertebrate paleontologist and currently Assistant Professor in Geology and Biology at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. When Dr. Curry Rogers is not in the field, she does research on the fossils she discovered in the field. In particular, she looks at the how fast some of the largest dinosaurs grew by looking closely at microscopic slices of fossilized bones (she describes her work in this video on SOL). Her specialty is the sauropod dinosaurs, the largest animals to ever walk on the earth.