The Royal Tyrrell Museum’s new face on the research team is a familiar one.
Caleb Brown has been selected for a post doctoral fellowship at the Tyrrell Museum.
Brown is originally from Red Deer, and he completed his Bachelor and Master degrees at the University of Calgary. He did his Ph.D at the University of Toronto. There he researched horned dinosaurs, looking at the variations and change of shapes of the frills. He graduated about a month ago.
“I worked here in the prep lab when I was doing my undergrad at the University of Calgary, so it is nice to come back,” said Brown.
The posting is for two years and he replaces Dr. Mike Newbrey who has accepted teaching position at Columbus State University in Georgia.
He likes the atmosphere at the Tyrrell.
“The main difference is the Tyrrell really has that role or obligation of going out and collecting the material; collecting the fossils, preparing them, storing them, and then also doing the research. At university, it is more focused on doing the research and not as much focus on the field work or taking care of the fossil resources,” said Brown, adding the Tyrrell’s public outreach and gallery plays a large role in sharing the science and capturing imagination.
For Brown, his imagination was sparked by the Red Deer River Valley.
“I grew up in the river area and when I was young I was exposed to the fossils in this river valley very early, in the area around here and further south in Dinosaur Provincial Park. Once I saw those fossils, I was hooked, I never wanted to be anything else,” he said.
To be selected for this fellowship, he proposed a couple projects. One is to look at horned dinosaurs in some of the mass grave bone beds in Dinosaur Provincial Park to study the variations.
“The second project deals with the way dinosaurs are preserved,” he said. “I am trying to show how the process of fossilization changes our understanding of communities or ecosystems.”
