Jingmai O'Connor

Jingmai O'Connor, a second year graduate student, attended the nearby Occidental College as an undergraduate from 2001 to 2004 where she majored in Geology, studying paleontology with Dr. Donald Prothero. In 2003 she began working with curators Dr. Xiaoming Wang and Dr. Luis Chiappe and volunteering in the Vertebrate Paleontology prep. lab at the museum. During the summer of 2003 she traveled to Montana with Dr. Luis Chiappe as part of the Museum's annual Dinosaur Expedition and helped collect the T. Rex now known as 'Thomas.' Later that summer she traveled into Inner Mongolia, China with Xiaoming Wang where they collected Neogene and Paleogene mammal fossils and paleomagnetic samples.  She did her senior composition on a new genus of mustelid from the Tunggur Formation in Inner Mongolia, China. Jingmai has also been part of numerous paleomagnetics projects in North America. After graduating a year early from Occidental, Jingmai began graduate school in the fall of 2004 at the University of Southern California in the department of Earth Sciences. She is the second student in the department to be advised by Dr. Luis Chiappe as a graduate student in residence at the museum. Her current research focuses on Mesozoic birds from China.

Jingmai's Skillz:

• fossil finder extraodinaire
• baijiu skills
• camping warrior skills
• fashion skills
• Adobe Photoshop/Dreamweaver, MS Office, html skills
• skateboard skills