Malcolm McKenna

Malcolm Carnegie McKenna ( born July 21, 1930 in Pomona, California, † March 3, 2008 in Boulder, Colorado) was an American vertebrate paleontologist. He was a specialist in fossil mammals.

McKenna studied at Pomona College and at Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley, in 1954 where he made ​​his bachelor's degree and in 1958 received his doctorate in paleontology. From 1960, he was first Assistant Curator and Curator from 1968 ( Frick Curator ) of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History ( which also each professorships were connected ). He has also been since 1972 a professor at Columbia University. 2000, he went into retirement.

He was a leading specialist in the systematics of mammals, about which he wrote a standard work with Susan Bell. At the American Museum of Natural History, he was much more responsible that in 1991 the first time expeditions were undertaken in the Gobi Desert, the first since Roy Chapman Andrews in the 1920s. McKenna participated in this part looking for mammal fossils from the Mesozoic Era. In his last years he went to the question of how mammals survived the mass extinction by asteroid impact at the turn of Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction.

He was married to Priscilla McKenna since 1953 and had three sons and a daughter. His wife accompanied him on several expeditions, and was Mayor in her home in Englewood, New Jersey. His father was a founder of the Claremont McKenna College in California and the family was related to the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. His brother Bruce McKenna is a screenwriter.

Writings

• With Susan K. Bell Classification of Mammals above the species level, Columbia University Press 1997