Michael Novacek

Michael Novacek

Biography

As senior vice president and provost of the American Museum of Natural History, Dr. Novacek provides leadership to the curatorial staff and advises the president on the direction of scientific research at the Museum. He is a chief spokesperson in enunciating the Museum's scientific program. Dr. Novacek was instrumental in establishing the Museum's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, and is a co-chair of the steering committee of Systematics Agenda 2000, an international scientific initiative to discover, describe, and classify the world's species. As a curator in the Division of Paleontology, Dr. Novacek has conducted extensive research on the evolutionary relationships of extinct and living mammals. His examination of broad-based problems in systematics and evolution draws upon evidence from the fossil record and molecular biology. He is one of the team leaders of the joint American Museum of Natural History/Mongolian Academy of Sciences ongoing expedition to the Gobi Desert to search for fossils and, in 1993, was one of the discoverers of Ukhaa Tolgod, the richest Cretaceous fossil vertebrate site in the world. In 1999, he started a series of expeditions to Patagonia, Argentina, to research dinosaurs, mammals, and other fossils. He has served as a member of the National Science Foundation Advisory Board and the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Novacek earned his Ph.D. in paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978. He joined the Museum in 1982.

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