Chiappe, Luis M.

Luis María Chiappe (born 18 June 1962) is an Argentine paleontologist born in Buenos Aires who is best known for his discovery of the first sauropod nesting sites in the badlands of Patagonia in 1997 and for his work on the origin and early evolution of Mesozoic birds. He has been the Senior Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County since 2012 and was the founding director of the museum's Dinosaur Institute. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, New York after immigrating from Argentina. Chiappe curated the award-winning Dinosaur Hall at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and led the decade-long work on the green dinosaur Gnatalie which culminated with a new mount in the NHM Commons. Chiappe is a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a laureate of the Alexander Humboldt Foundation, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, and a member of the Real Academia de Ciencias de España.