Dr. Carrano is the Curator of Dinosaurs at the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.
He is also an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University, and
a member of the Advisory Board of the Paleobiology Database.

Matthew received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1998,
where he studied the evolution and functional morphology of dinosaur
locomotion.  He then spent five years as a postdoctoral associate at
Stony Brook University, where he began an apparently interminable
study of theropod dinosaur systematics.  His fieldwork is geared
toward filling in the "gaps" in the dinosaur fossil record, and to
that end he has conducted fieldwork in Madagascar and Chile.  Matt is
also currently involved in several field projects in the Late
Jurassic and Early Cretaceous of Wyoming.  His current research
focuses on understanding the patterns of dinosaur evolution during
their 160-million-year history, which heavily involves both
systematics and the Paleobiology Database.  He also collects (and
produces) English translations of foreign-language paleontology
articles and makes them available on his website, the Polyglot
Paleontologist.

In addition to dinosaurs, Matt's other interests include food and
cooking, Italian heritage, and city planning.  He is particularly
proud to have combined all of these at once while eating pollo al
diavolo in the city square of his grandparents' birthplace, Amalfi.

David B. Weishampel

David Weishampel is Professor of Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Receiving his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1981, Dave has conducted museum and university research in North America, Europe, Argentina, Mexico, Mongolia, Japan, and China. He has also conducted field work throughout North America, including Utah, Kansas, West Virginia, Montana in the United States, and Alberta, Canada, as well as in Romania, Hungary, and southern Mongolia. Dave's research includes the evolution of ornithopod dinosaurs, their jaw mechanics, and ecological relationships with contemporary plants, a variety of behavioral studies of dinosaurs, including communication, display, and reproductive strategies (i.e., eggs and babies). More recent work in Romania and Hungary concentrates on dinosaurian island biogeography, dwarfing, and heterochrony across Europe at the end of the Cretaceous. Dave is the senior editor of "The Dinosauria", as well as coauthor of "The Evolution and Extinction of Dinosaurs", "The Dinosaurs of the East Coast" and "The Dinosaur Papers: 1676-1906".

Matthew C. Lamanna

Dr. Lamanna is an Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and the principal dinosaur researcher at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology and Planetary Science at the University of Pittsburgh.

Originally from the Finger Lakes Region of upstate New York, Matt received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2004. His research interests involve exploring the effects of large-scale geographic and environmental changes on dinosaur evolution, distribution, and diversity. Within the past five years, he has co-directed field expeditions to central and southern Patagonia (Argentina), Egypt, Australia, and China that have resulted in the discovery of multiple new species of dinosaurs and other Cretaceous vertebrates. Foremost among these finds is one of the largest land animals ever discovered, a 95-million-year-old herbivorous dinosaur from Egypt that Matt and his colleagues named Paralititan stromeri. The discovery of Paralititan received extensive national and international media coverage and was documented in The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt, a film that aired on the A&E network in 2002. Matt also consulted on and narrated The Science Channel’s documentary Rise of the Feathered Dragons, that chronicled his team’s recent discovery of exquisite new specimens of the Early Cretaceous bird Gansus yumenensis in northwestern China.

Matt currently serves as the principal scientific advisor to Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Dinosaurs in Their World exhibit renovation project. Apart from paleontology, he enjoys playing and watching a variety of sports (most notably American football) and irritating his neighbors with his bass guitar

David Varricchio

David Varricchio is an Assistant Professor in the Earth Science Department at Montana State University in Bozeman. His doctoral research examined the taphonomy of dinosaur bonebeds in the Late Cretaceous of Montana and he received his Ph.D. from Montana State University in 1995.

His research continues to be largely field based and focused on the interface between biologic and geologic processes. By blending sedimentologic, taphonomic and anatomic data within a broader evolutionary context, this work addresses a variety of questions on dinosaur paleobiology. Past and ongoing research includes studies on the reproductive behavior of the theropod Troodon and its bearing on the evolution of avian reproduction, tyrannosaur stomach contents, herding and parenting behavior in a variety of dinosaurs, documenting modern taphonomic processes within the Yellowstone River of Montana, and most recently, demonstrating burrowing behavior in the dinosaur Oryctodromeus.

Current fieldwork includes localities in Montana, Idaho, Nevada, and China. Originally from eastern Pennsylvania, David enjoys hiking and bird watching in and out of Montana.