Presenter: Barry Albright, Ph.D.
Date: April 25, 2006
Time: 7:00PM
Meeting Place: St. Augustine Library (Main Branch)
 

Barry Albright will lead a slide presentation of Antarctica, Southern Ocean wildlife including penguins and their rookeries, skuas, petrels and more. Barry’s birding interests have taken him to Ecuador and Nicaragua, and binoculars were always around his neck in Antarctica and Patagonia, as well.

Barry grew up in Charleston, SC, and developed an interest in natural history at an early age. His love of the ocean resulted in a BS in Oceanography from Florida Institute of Technology, but it was his interest in paleontology that later resulted in an MS in Geology with an emphasis in Vertebrate Paleontology from Louisiana State University, and a Ph.D., also in Geology with an emphasis in Vertebrate Paleontology, from the University of California, Riverside.  

After California, Barry received a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Florida Museum of National History, Dept. of Vertebrate Paleontology, University of Florida, which was followed by a position as the Curator of Paleontology and Geology at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, AZ, from 1999-2003. He now teaches Earth Science at the University of North Florida and Florida Community College at Jacksonville. 

Barry has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals on a broad variety of topics in paleontology. His primary areas of interest and expertise focus on the dating of fossil-bearing sedimentary rocks using paleomagnetic stratigraphy and on mid-to-late Tertiary mammalian evolution, biostratigraphy, and faunal dynamics.  

His more recent studies, however, have focused on large, predatory, Cretaceous marine reptiles – those reptiles that swam the seas as the dinosaurs dominated the landscape. Most of his current work takes place in southern Utah, but has also worked in Antarctica, Patagonia, Oregon, California, Montana, and Texas.

Barry’s other lives included several years of sailing the Caribbean, working on King Crab boats in the Bering Sea, conducting natural history tours on South Carolina barrier islands, working as a salt-water fishing guide, and working in electrical engineering for Florida Power and Light Company.