Dodson, Peter

Peter Dodson (born August 20, 1946) is an American paleontologist who has published many papers and written and collaborated on books about dinosaurs. An authority on Ceratopsians, he has also authored several papers and textbooks on hadrosaurs and sauropods, and is a co-editor of The Dinosauria, widely considered the definitive scholarly reference on dinosaurs. Dodson described Avaceratops in 1986; Suuwassea in 2004, and many others, while his students have named Paralititan and Auroraceratops. He has conducted field research in Canada, the United States, India, Madagascar, Egypt, Argentina, and China. A professor of vertebrate paleontology and of veterinary anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania, Dodson has also taught courses in geology, history, history and sociology of science, and religious studies. Dodson is also a research associate at the Academy of Natural Sciences. In 2001, two former students named an ancient frog species, Nezpercius dodsoni, after him (as well as after the Native American Nez Perce people). Dodson has also been skeptical to the theory of a dinosaurian origin of birds, but more recently has come down on the side of this theory.