STERNBERG MUSEUM

Fort Hays State University’s Sternberg Museum of Natural History is excited to welcome Christina Byrd to the staff of the museum as a Paleontology Collections Manager.

According to the chief curator, Dr. Laura Wilson, “The paleontology collection has never had a full time collection manager to help with data and specimen preservation. With the award of two NSF [National Science Foundation] grants, extra help is needed for grant management, including overseeing 7 student workers, as well as with general collection upkeep.” That is where Byrd comes in.

Byrd obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Geology from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. While working toward her Bachelor’s Degree, she studied preservation of whale vertebrae at a fourteen-million-year old site in eastern Virginia.

Byrd then worked toward her Master’s Degree in Biology at Marshall University in West Virginia. During her time as a graduate student at Marshall, Byrd studied developmental changes of plesiosaurs from the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway (the seaway that used to cover Hays, KS).

After completing her Master’s Degree, Byrd worked as an intern on the Panama Project at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City. Following her internship, Byrd worked as a paleontology technician at the Virginia Museum of Natural History photographing fossils for the Fossil Insect Collaborative Project.

Now, we are excited to have Byrd as part of the Sternberg team.