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Bethany AugliereA
s an undergraduate at the
University of Washington,
Gregory Erickson wasn’t
sure what he wanted to do.
He started out as an engineering major,
then dabbled with getting a degree in
wildlife management. In 1986, having
taken numerous science courses, he hap-
pened to compare notes with his best
friend, a geology major, and realized he
was just a few courses shy of obtaining
a geology degree himself. Eager to finish
college, Erickson signed up for a class
in vertebrate paleontology focusing on
dinosaurs — a decision that ultimately
changed his life.
After Erickson earned the second-high-
est grade out of 500 students in the class,
his professor invited him to join a field
expedition in Montana to collect dinosaurs
for the university museum. The professor,impressed with Erickson’s ability to visu-
alize fossils as living animals, encouraged
him to go into paleontology. “In many
ways, the field found me,” Erickson says.
Erickson moved on to Montana State
University in Bozeman for graduate
school, pursuing a master’s degree in
biology. In his research, he discovered
daily-forming growth lines in dinosaur
teeth, similar to those in modern mam-
mals and crocodilians. The work netted
him the Alfred Sherwood Romer Prize
for the best student presentation at the
1991 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
annual meeting. He went on to get his
doctorate in integrative biology at the
University of California, Berkeley, and
subsequently conducted post-doctoral
research in biomechanical engineering at
Stanford University and ecology and evo-
lutionary biology at Brown University.
Today, Erickson is a professor of
anatomy and vertebrate paleobiology at
Florida State University (FSU) in Tal-
lahassee. He combines his expertise in
paleontology, engineering, anatomy
and zoology to study teeth and bones
to explore questions about the growth
rates, feeding ecology and biomechanics
of both extinct and living reptiles. He
recently co-discovered that the bite force
of Tyrannosaurus rex was 3,629 kilograms
— the equivalent of being crushed by
three small cars.
Erickson has received numerous
awards for both his innovative research
and his teaching. He’s also been part of
more than 135 science documentaries,
including hosting “Hunter & Hunted,”
a National Geographic Channel series
that focused on human interactions with
predatory animals.
Erickson recently sat down with
EARTH to discuss the big questions
in dinosaur biology, his philosophy
on communicating science to the pub-
lic, and how he got started working
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