$32.45 DVD
About the Scientists
Jørn Harald Hurum
What kind of person does it take to discover the ultimate predator?
Jørn Harald Hurum was born in Drammen, Norway. He began collecting fossils and minerals in the Oslo region as a child. His early interests led him to earn his degree in Paleontology—and later his Ph.D.—from the University of Oslo.
Jørn received a two-year post-doctorate grant to study skull morphology in tyrannosaurid theropods by the Norwegian research council in 1998-2000 alongside Phillip Currie and the late Karol Sabath. In 2000, he joined The Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo, where he currently works as an associate professor in vertebrate paleontology.
Jørn has completed fieldwork in Canada and has traveled to China, Europe, Africa and Australia to visit paleontological sites. His most current fieldwork has been focused on dinosaurs. This included work in 2002 on the island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago. During his last three field seasons (2004, 2006, 2007), 40 skeletons of Jurassic marine reptiles were mapped and six excavated by his group in cooperation with his colleague Hans Arne Nakrem.
Jørn has published 19 peer-reviewed scientific papers, of which 12 are on mammals, and 7 on dinosaurs, often co-authored with Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska. He is genuinely interested in outreach work and has published several popular books in Norwegian on subjects like human evolution, local geology and petrography as well as a dinosaur book in Braille. He also has many publications in Norwegian (53) on paleontology, mineralogy and the history of science. He is often interviewed for Norwegian radio, TV and newspapers commenting on paleontological and evolutionary issues (about 100 times a year), co-hosted a science talk show on Norwegian radio and has also had his own weekly part in a children's science television show. He was project leader on the large exhibitions at the Natural History museum "The secret treasures of China" in 2000 and "Deadly dinosaurs" in 2003.
In 1991, Jørn married Merethe Frøyland, who is an associate professor at the Norwegian Center for Science Education at the University of Oslo. The couple has one daughter.
Dr. Patrick Druckenmiller
Dr. Druckenmiller is the Curator of Earth Sciences at the University of Alaska Museum of the North and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is a vertebrate paleontologist specializing in the study of Mesozoic (Age of Dinosaurs) marine reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. While remains of these two extinct groups of vertebrates were first unearthed nearly 200 years ago, many aspects of their life histories and paleobiology remain largely unknown. Pat studies the diversity and evolutionary relationships of these globally distributed organisms through discovery and descriptions of new material. He also uses computed tomographic (CT) scan data, which is an important non-destructive means to help in understanding cranial anatomy and sensory systems of extinct organisms.
Pat has conducted extensive paleontologic fieldwork throughout the western United States and Canada. In recent years, his fieldwork has focused on new discoveries from high latitude sites in Alaska and Norway. Currently, Pat is collaborating on a research project with the University of Oslo Natural History Museum to document Late Jurassic marine reptiles in the arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. He also has active field projects underway in Alaska.
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