Paul Sereno

Youth and education

The son of a mail carrier^[5] and a celebrated art teacher in elementary schools in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, Sereno graduated from Naperville Central High School in 1975.^[6] Aiming to be a studio artist, he enrolled later that year as an undergraduate at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. In 1978 during his junior year, a trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York changed the course of his career.^[7]

Early career

In 1979 Sereno entered Columbia University as a graduate student with office space at the American Museum of Natural History. In 1984, he conducted an 8-month research expedition abroad to study dinosaur evolution for his dissertation. This work took him to the Flaming Cliffs of Outer Mongolia, a site previously explored by Roy Chapman Andrews in the 1920s, where dinosaur eggs and Velociraptor fossils had been discovered.^[8]

In 1987 Sereno received a Ph.D. degree in Geological Sciences from Columbia University, his dissertation focusing on the parrot-beaked dinosaur Psittacosaurus and the evolution of ornithischian dinosaurs.^[9]

Teaching

Sereno taught human anatomy to medical students. He also taught Dinosaur Science, a class that included field trips to the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. During these field trips, Sereno discovered a subadult Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton and a dinosaur mummy zone.^[10] Sereno taught another course, From Fossils to Fermi's Paradox, which featured university scholars discussing evidence for the evolution of intelligence on Earth and the possibility of intelligence elsewhere.^[11]

Science learning

In 1998, Sereno co-founded Project Exploration, a non-profit science education organization. In 2021, Sereno founded the Scitopia Foundation, a non-profit science education organization. Scitopia Chicago, the foundation's flagship institution, launched on the south side of Chicago in 2026.^[13]

Scitopia Chicago offers science programs and labs for teens conducted outside school hours. The facility houses multiple civic institutions on a single site, including a library, community center, conservatory, zoo, aquarium, and museum.^[14]

Fossil Lab

In the 1940s, the University of Chicago closed its Walker Museum, which had housed collections of recent and fossil specimens and a fossil preparation laboratory. In 2024, Sereno opened a fossil laboratory with 6,000 square feet in the adjacent Washington Park neighborhood.^[15]

Dinosaurs

• Aerosteon
• Afrovenator
• Significant new material of Carcharodontosaurus, including Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis)
• Deltadromeus
• Eocarcharia
• Eodromaeus
• Eoraptor
• Erliansaurus
• Graciliceratops
• Significant new material of Herrerasaurus
• Jobaria
• Kryptops
• Neimongosaurus
• Nigersaurus
• Pegomastax
• Three new species of Psittacosaurus (P. meileyingensis, P. xinjiangensis, P. gobiensis)
• Rajasaurus
• Raptorex
• Rugops
• Significant new material of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus
• Spinosaurus mirabilis
• Significant new material of Sinornithomimus.^[16]
• Spinostropheus
• Suchomimus

Other fossil reptiles

• Marasuchus, an early relative of dinosaurs
• "The African Pterosaur"
• Sarcosuchus imperator
• Anatosuchus minor from Niger
• Araripesuchus rattoides from Niger and Morocco
• Kaprosuchus saharicus from Niger and Morocco
• Laganosuchus thaumastos from Niger and Morocco
• Laganosuchus maghrebensis from Niger and Morocco