Jingmai O'Connor is a scientist!

Dr. Jingmai O'Connor is a paleontologist (a scientist who studies fossils to learn about ancient life). Her lab is at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, China. She says about her research, "I study Mesozoic birds and their closest dinosaur relatives in order to understand not only how this group first evolved from dinosaurs, but how one lineage survived the end-Cretaceous extinction to become the most successful group of vertebrates alive today (modern birds)." She has done field research in China, South Africa, Canada, Romania, and the United States.

A scientist's job is to ask questions that we don't know the answers to and then work to find the answers through observation, experiments, and careful thinking. Some of the scientific questions that Jingmai would like to answer are, "Why did most birds go extinct during the end Cretaceous mass extinction? How was flight different in various lineages of early birds that lacked important skeletal adaptations for flight that are present in modern birds? What caused so many lineages of dinosaurs to experiment with flight around the same time?"

Scroll down to keep playing Can You Spot a Scientist?