Museum Director Attains International Acclaim
The USU Eastern Prehistoric museum director and paleontologist, Dr. Kenneth Carpenter, received the UniBio Press Award for his paleontological research.
When Carpenter arrived in Price, he vowed to bring international attention to the museum, and being the recipient of this award helps him fulfill this promise.
His wrote a paper titled, Variation in a population of Theropoda (Dinosauria): Allosaurus from the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry (Upper Jurassic), Utah, USA and was published in Paleontological Research in Dec. 31, 2010.
The USU Eastern Prehistoric museum director and paleontologist, Dr. Kenneth Carpenter, received the UniBio Press Award for his paleontological research.
When Carpenter arrived in Price, he vowed to bring international attention to the museum, and being the recipient of this award helps him fulfill this promise.
His wrote a paper titled, Variation in a population of Theropoda (Dinosauria): Allosaurus from the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry (Upper Jurassic), Utah, USA and was published in Paleontological Research in Dec. 31, 2010.
The research in the article addressed a challenge that faces scientists studying the remains of long-extinct animals. More specifically, how much variation in structure can occur in a single species, and how much change indicates an entirely different species?
“Having only bones to work with is a real challenge for paleontologists. Biologists use color patterns, behavior and songs to separate bird species. But none of that fossilizes,” Carpenter says. “My work was to tease out some differences among the bones of Allosaurus from our own backyard, the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. I was able to show what changes occur as the animals grew up, as well as what differences existed among the adults. This gave other paleontologists a model to work from.”
“It was a real honor to win this award. It reflects well on the Prehistoric Museum and USU Eastern.”
Press is a non-profit organization that distributes biology-oriented academic electronic journals including Paleontological Research, the journal of Paleontological Society of Japan. The “UniBio Press Award” is given each year for each journal to the author(s) who produced the most frequently accessed paper among all the papers published in the previous year.
