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K. Christopher Beard is an American paleontologist, an expert on the primate fossil record and a 2000 MacArthur Fellowship "Genius" Award Winner. Beard's research is reshaping critical debates about the evolutionary origins of mammals, including primates, routinely questioning current thinking about their geographical origins. Dr. Beard is the former Curator of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Mary R. Dawson Chair of Vertebrate Paleontology, at University of Pittsburgh. He is currently Distinguished Foundation Professor, Senior Curator at the University of Kansas. He was co-author with Dan Gebo about an extinct primate from China. Dr. Beard also authored the book The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes and Humans. Beard was also part of the research teams that discovered Teilhardina, the earliest primate ever found in North America, and Eosimias, one of the earliest higher primates yet discovered. He worked with NASA to scan a Tyrannosaurus rex skull. Beard received his PhD from the Functional Anatomy and Evolution Program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1989.

Below is a list of taxa that Beard has contributed to naming:

Awards

• 2000 MacArthur Fellows Program

Books

• The hunt for the dawn monkey: unearthing the origins of monkeys, apes, and humans, University of California Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-520-23369-0
• "Mammalian Biogeography and Anthropoid Origins", Primate biogeography: progress and prospects, Editors Shawn M. Lehman, John G. Fleagle, Springer, 2006, ISBN 978-0-387-29871-9
• "Basal Anthropoids", The primate fossil record, Editor Walter Carl Hartwig, Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-521-66315-1
• "Early Wasatchian Mammals From the Gulf Coastal Plain of Mississippi", Eocene biodiversity: unusual occurrences and rarely sampled habitats, Editor Gregg F. Gunnell, Springer, 2001, ISBN 9780306465284

Papers

• Beard, Kenneth Christopher; Qi, Tao; Dawson, Mary R.; Wang, Banyue; Li, Chuankuei (14 April 1994). "A diverse new primate fauna from middle Eocene fissure-fillings in southeastern China". Nature. 368 (6472): 604–609. doi:10.1038/368604a0. ISSN 0028-0836. Retrieved 24 December 2024.

• Beard, Kenneth Christopher (11 March 2008). "The oldest North American primate and mammalian biogeography during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 105 (10): 3815–3818. doi:10.1073/pnas.0710180105. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2268774. PMID 18316721. Retrieved 24 September 2024.

• Métais, Grégoire; Coster, Pauline; Licht, Alexis; Ocakoglu, Faruk; Beard, K. Christopher (11 December 2023). "Additions to the late Eocene Süngülü mammal fauna in Easternmost Anatolia and the Eocene-Oligocene transition at the periphery of Balkanatolia". Comptes Rendus Palevol. 22 (35): 711–727. Retrieved 1 July 2024.

References

1. ^ Science
2. "CMNH Vertebrate Paleontology: K. Christopher Beard". Archived from the original on 2010-07-03. Retrieved 2010-04-22.
3. "People | Department of Geology and Environmental Science | University of Pittsburgh | University of Pittsburgh".
4. "K. Christopher Beard | Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology". eeb.ku.edu. Archived from the original on 2014-05-22.
5. "Newly discovered fossils from China shed light on common ancestry of monkeys, apes and humans". Archived from the original on 2010-04-10. Retrieved 2010-04-22.
6. "NASA - No Bones About It: NASA Analyzes Prehistoric Predator from the Past".
7. Beard, K. Christopher; Métais, Grégoire; Ocakoğlu, Faruk; Licht, Alexis (July 2021). "An omomyid primate from the Pontide microcontinent of north-central Anatolia: Implications for sweepstakes dispersal of terrestrial mammals during the Eocene". Geobios. 66–67: 143–152. doi:10.1016/j.geobios.2020.06.008. Retrieved 2 January 2025 – via Elsevier Science Direct.
8. Beard, K. Christopher; Jones, Matthew F.; Thurber, Nicholas A.; Sanisidro, Oscar (2 November 2019). "Systematics and paleobiology of Chiromyoides (Mammalia, Plesiadapidae) from the upper Paleocene of western North America and western Europe". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 39 (6): e1730389. doi:10.1080/02724634.2019.1730389. ISSN 0272-4634. Retrieved 4 January 2025 – via Taylor and Francis Online.
9. Mattingly, Spencer G.; Sanisidro, Oscar; Beard, Kenneth Christopher (17 November 2018). "A new species of Carpolestes (Mammalia, Plesiadapoidea) from the late Paleocene of southern Wyoming: assessing changes in size and shape during the evolution of a key anatomical feature". Historical Biology. 30 (8): 1031–1042. doi:10.1080/08912963.2017.1328509. ISSN 0891-2963. Retrieved 5 January 2025 – via Taylor and Francis Online.
10. Beard, Kenneth Christopher; Coster, Pauline M.C.; Salem, Mustafa J.; Chaimanee, Yaowalak; Jaeger, Jean-Jacques (January 2016). "A new species of Apidium (Anthropoidea, Parapithecidae) from the Sirt Basin, central Libya: First record of Oligocene primates from Libya". Journal of Human Evolution. 90: 29–37. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2015.08.010. Retrieved 2 January 2025 – via Elsevier Science Direct.
11. Ni, Xijun; Beard, K. Christopher; Meng, Jin; Wang, Yuanqing; Gebo, Daniel L. (16 May 2007). "Discovery of the First Early Cenozoic Euprimate (Mammalia) from Inner Mongolia". American Museum Novitates. 3571 (1): 1. doi:10.1206/0003-0082(2007)528[1:DOTFEC]2.0.CO;2. ISSN 0003-0082. Retrieved 2 January 2025 – via BioOne Digital Library.

External links

• "K. Christopher Beard", Scientific Commons
• "Fossil May Represent New Branch of Primates' Family Tree", The Washington Post, Apr 5, 1996

• American paleontologists
• University of Pittsburgh faculty
• MacArthur Fellows
• Living people
• American curators