Paul Sereno

Paul Callistus Sereno (born October 11, 1957) is a professor of paleontology at the University of Chicago who has discovered several new dinosaur species on several continents, including at sites in Inner Mongolia, Argentina, Morocco and Niger.^[1] One of his widely publicized discoveries includes a nearly complete specimen of Sarcosuchus imperator — commonly referred to as SuperCroc — found in Gadoufaoua, located in the Tenere desert of Niger.

The son of a mail carrier^[2] and an art teacher at Prairie Elementary, Sereno grew up in Naperville, Illinois and graduated from Naperville Central High School. He completed his B.S., Biological Sciences from Northern Illinois University in 1979, M.A. in Vertebrate Paleontology, from Columbia University in 1981, M. Phil. in Geological Sciences in 1981, and Ph.D. in Geological Sciences, in 1987.

Sereno was named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People (1997).^[3]

Sereno co-founded Project Exploration, a non-profit science education organization to encourage city kids to pursue careers in science. He appeared in the 2009 DVD Dinosaur Discoveries, which included segments originally hosted by CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite. The program first aired on A&E in 1991 and was later rebroadcast on the Disney Channel through the late 1990s.

On August 14 2008, Sereno uncovered a large Stone Age cemetery at Gobero in the Nigerien Sahara, remnants of a people who lived from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago on the edge of what was then a large lake. The National Geographic based a documentary, Skeletons of the Sahara on this discovery, which premiered in 2013.^[4][5][6]

In 2024, Sereno opened the University of Chicago Fossil Lab in the Washington Park area on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. The lab functions as both a working lab and an outreach museum to introduce younger generations to paleontology.^[7][8]

Sereno is part of an international team that since 2017 has been planning the Museum of the River, a zero energy museum in the center of Niamey, Niger's capital.^[9]

Sereno led the team that discovered a theropod dinosaur in the spinosaurid species, Spinosaurus mirabilis, that lived 95 million years ago in what now is the central Sahara, within Niger. The team first gathered skull fragments in 2019, then returned again in 2022 and found two more specimens. A local Tuareg inhabitant led the team to the fossil field where S. mirabilis was discovered. Characterized by a 2-foot high bony cranial crest and interdigitating teeth, the species lived 500 km or more from marine shorelines, likely along rivers in forested areas, based on the locations and sediments in which the fossils were found. The team hypothesized that the fish-eating species primarily waded through relatively shallow water, stalking various large fish along the rivers.^[10][11] An exhibit of Spinosaurus mirabilis at the Chicago Children's Museum opened on March 1, 2026.^[12] Some studies have argued that Spinosaurus was adapted to tail-propelled swimming,^[13][14] but Sereno subsequently argued against that point of view.^[15]

In the field of phylogenetic nomenclature, Sereno developed the important concept of node-stem triplet, which can stabilise nomenclature to ensure that a given taxon and its two main sub-taxa always retain the same names.^[16][17] For instance, using this system, one could ensure that Dinosauria always includes the two main subdivisions Saurischia and Ornithischia, but the definitions that are established under the PhyloCode do not reflect that system.^[18][19]

In addition to his many discoveries in the field, public communication has been a big part of Sereno's career.

• "Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara". National Geographic. Archived from the original on September 26, 2008.. September 2008 issue.

• Paulsereno.org: official Paul Sereno website
• TED talk by Paul Sereno on YouTube What can fossils teach us?
• TEDX talk by Paul Sereno on YouTube Dinosaurs on Drifting Continents
• Digging up dinosaurs, TED