Dr. Phillip Currie is to be honoured with a national award.
Media reports say Currie, who is now a professor at the University of Alberta, will be receiving the Royal Canadian Geographical Society Gold Medal this week in Ottawa. Canadian actor Dan Ackroyd will be presenting it.
Currie is being recognized for his research into dinosaur group behaviour and migration patterns. Currie believes that, during the late Cretaceous period, North America and Asia were connected via a land bridge and that dinosaurs would migrate between the two continents.
Fossil assemblages in Alberta and Mongolia share many similarities in the kinds of dinosaurs present.
Currie was one of the leads in creating the Royal Tyrrell Museum and, when it opened in 1985, became Curator of Dinosaurs. He left the Tyrrell in 2005 to be a professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta and was recently inducted into the Alberta Order of Excellence.
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society Gold Medal was first awarded in 1972. The award was established to recognize particular achievement by one or more individuals in the general field of geography for a significant national or international event. Past recipients include astronaut Jerry Linenger and Alex Trebek.
