摘要：Mary R. Dawson was born February 27, 1931. She studied veterinary medicine at Michigan State College (now Michigan State University) before switching to a zoology major. After obtaining a B.S. in 1952, she went for a year to the Institute of Animal Genetics of the University of Edinburgh on a Fulbright scholarship. She earned her Ph.D. in 1957 from the University of Kansas based on a thesis on North American fossil lagomorphs; her doctoral advisor was Robert Warren Wilson (1909–2006). For most of her career, Mary was connected to Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she started in 1962 as a Research Associate; eight years later, she was promoted to full Curator. From 1973 to 1997, Mary chaired the museum’s Earth Sciences Division, and, upon her retirement in 2003, she was recognized as Curator Emerita. She passed away on November 29, 2020.
