Prior to MSU I spent seven years as Curator of Paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum (CMM) in Solomons, Maryland. It was during my time at CMM that I became involved in research on fossil sharks, including the ‘megatooth,’ a giant extinct relative of the Great White Shark.
My graduate school experience was at the University of Kansas, at the Museum of Natural History (from 1984-1990), where I received both my Masters and Ph.D. studying primitive late Paleozoic ray-finned fishes. I also spent three years at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego (1980-1983), analyzing fish microfossils as a means of dating deep-sea pelagic clays. I received a B.S. in Paleontology at the University of California at Berkeley.