by Edward Summer

Name: Mark Allen Norell
Age: 39
Lenth: 5'9"
Weight: 145 lbs.
Favorite Food: Tuna Sushi (especially Nigiri Sushi)
Family: Married
Genus: AssociateCurator in the Vertebrate Paleontology Department at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) New York City
Place of Origin: St. Paul, Minnesota, raised in Los Angeles, California. Ancestors from Sweden.
Residence: New York ity, New York, United States.
Favorite Movie: The Road Warrior, The Unforgiven.
Favorite TV Show: Rarely watches, but likes "This Old House" (PBS)
Favorite Dinosaur: Oviraptor (because it is so unusual looking).
Favorite Sport: Football (spectator only)
Exercise: Running, Bike Riding, Volleyball.
Hobbies: Collects Primitive Asian & South American Art, antique furniture, restores old house.
Distinguishing Features: Likes sunshine, has PhD in Biology.

Vera Velociraptor's Very Verbose, Voracious Vocabulary 
 

Systemicist. - A person who studies how plants and animals relate to one another.

Phylogenetically - (SAY FIE lo jen ET ick a lee) - The way that a species of plant or animal evolves.

"keeled" breast bone - It looks like a chicken's breast bone.

Vertebrates - Animals with backbones.

Students? Pay Attention! Be sure to check out that is to say, investigate, (humph), certain other useful pieces of terminology at the 6V-WOW Archives.

Mark Norell: No. I wasn't a dinosaur fanatic when I was young. I wanted to be an archaeologist. My parents took me to the LA County Natural History Museum when I was in second grade. Slowly, I became more and more interested in dinosaurs. As an undergraduate student, I went to western Colorado with George Callison for three summers. We discovered lots of unnamed dinosaurs, especially sauropods and allosaurs. 

DIG: Do you have a special interest?

MN: I see myself as a "systemicist." I'm interested in the "system" of how plants and animals relate to one another. That's what I use to study evolution. It's diversity -- the tremendous variety of life forms -- that is useful. How do we know how many animals existed 180 million years ago? We can count how many we find in the rock. But that might be wrong. Maybe we are looking in a place where there are no animals. Or maybe we are looking in a place where there are a lot of animals. It is hard to tell what was "normal" millions of years ago. I look for alternate explanations of why species originated or became extinct. 

DIG: When did you first go to Mongolia?

MN: In 1990, my first year at the AMNH, I was invited to go on a short trip with Malcolm McKenna and Mike Novacek. In 1991, there was a full scale expedition. 

DIG: Who discovered Mononychus?

MN: Mononychus (SAY MON oh NIE kus) wasn't a single discovery. Roy Chapman Andrews (also from AMNH) found one first in the 1920's. The Soviet Mongolian Expedition found one in 1987. Malcolm McKenna found our specimen. While walking through the badlands, he saw some small bones on the surface. 

DIG: What was special about this fossil?

MN: It wasn't smashed flat. Our knowledge of early birds comes from Archaeopterix and Sinornis. All those specimens were found flattened in limestone or shale. This distorts the body. These Mononychus were preserved on the surface of a flood plain with lots of other dinosaurs. They hadn't been eaten or broken up or crushed. Part of a river bank protected them so they are still three dimentional. 

DIG: How is Mononychus different from other birds?

MN: I'd say more surprising than strange, Mononychus has features that we'd guess that an animal would have that branched of phylogenetically (SAY FIE lo jen ET ick a lee) (which is the way that a species of plan or animal evolves) between Archaeopteryx (which is older) and modern birds. These included a "keeled" breast bone (it looks like a chicken's breast bone) and a very bird-like pelvis (hipbone). It also has the unusual features like the short forelimb. We didn't expect this because the oldest primitive birds like Archaeopteryx could fly. 

DIG: Why is that strange?

MN: Mononychus has teeth and a long tail: modern birds don't have these. But many living birds like kiwis and penguins have some pretty peculiar features also. Yet we can still tell who their relatives are because of important phylogenetic features. Within mammals, good examples are bats and whales. What if these animals were extinct? Even though they'd appear unusual, the skeletons still give us enough clues to determine who the close relatives of these creatures were. 

DIG: Usually birds fly, but Mononychus and penguins don't.

MN: Flying vertebrates (animals with backbones), are not as special as we think. Flight has evolved many times. I happen to think that flight evolved from dinosaurs that ran and started to jump into the air. Some people think that flight evolved from animals that jumped from tree limb to tree limb like flying squirrels or flying lemurs. Nobody knows for sure. 

DIG: Some of our readers would like to be paleontologists.

MN: When you're young you think that you should be out collecting fossils. Wrong! It's more important to get good grades and a well-rounded education or you can't get into graduate school. Study hard. There are thousands of bones discovered years ago that still haven't been studied because there are not enough people to do it. 

DIG: What next?

MN: I'm going back to Mongolia in June. I'd love to find another Mononychus, but I'll take anything we can find! 

Related Resources:

July 1997. Dinosaurs in the Dunes! There is a new expedition currently in Mongolia! You can follow their progress on a way kewl website sponsored by The American Museum of Natural History and The Discovery Channel. 

American Museum of Natural History see Dinolinks Page
Fossils Show Dinosaur Sitting On Nest - Article

All You Need to Know About Dinosaurs  by Mark Norell , (1991)

Dinosaur Eggs : The Story of the Oviraptor by Mark Norell, Lowell Dingus, Mick Ellison (Illustrator) Hardcover (February 1999)  Doubleday; ISBN: 0385325584 

Discovering Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History by Mark A. Norell, Eugene Gaffney (Contributor) THIS TITLE IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT Hardcover - 204 pages (May 1995)  A. A. Knopf; ISBN: 0679433864 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.00 x 10.35 x 9.31 

Searching for Velociraptor by Mark Norell, (HarperCollins, $15.95), ISBN: 0060258934, Ages 7 and up