Vertebrate Paleontology News & Updates

The KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas has named Christina Lutz as the vertebrate paleontology lead preparator and lab manager. In her role, Lutz will support the research and educational mission of the Vertebrate Paleontology division by preparing fossil material collected from the field and creating high-quality molds and casts of vertebrate fossils for use in research, teaching and public exhibits.

The University of Kansas moved up seven spots to No. 74 among public universities in this year’s U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges” rankings, released Sept. 23.

Paleontologists from the University of Kansas have described for the first time a species of Swaindelphys discovered in Texas’ Big Bend National Park, though the ecosystem was drastically different in the Paleocene, when it thrived, than today.

Paleontologists from the University of Kansas are back in Montana this summer for their final excavation of a rare dinosaur fossil: a juvenile tyrannosaur.

LAWRENCE — The only dinosaur known to have lived in what is now Kansas, Silvisaurus condrayi, was designated the official state land fossil of Kansas, thanks in part to a Kansas rancher and a Goddard schoolteacher and his sixth-grade students. Teacher Joel Condray, his students from Challenger Intermediate School in Goddard as well as David Burnham, University of Kansas fossil preparator, provided testimony for the bill, SB-3. The bill was sponsored by State Sen. Elaine Bowers, R-Concordia,