Cand Scient. 1993, University of Oslo.
Dr. Scient. 1997, University of Oslo.
Current position:
Associate professor, Natural History Museum, University of Oslo.
Jørn Harald Hurum was born on 4th of November 1967, in Drammen, a city in southeastern Norway. Since childhood he has collected fossils and minerals in the Oslo region. He passed high school finals in 1986. In the academic year 1987 he started studies of paleontology at the University of Oslo. In 1993 he was granted the degree of a Candidate scientiarum on the basis of a thesis: "Snout and orbit of Cretaceous Asian multituberculates studied by serial sections", while in 1997 he was granted the Ph. D. degree on the basis of a dissertation: "Cranial structure and relationships of Mongolian Late Cretaceous multituberculate mammals". Both theses have been done under the supervision of Prof. Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska, and based on material of Cretaceous multituberculate mammals, collected by the Polish-Mongolian Paleontological Expeditions to the Gobi Desert, and housed at the Institute of Paleobiology, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He received a two year grant to study skull morphology in tyrannosaurid theropods by the Norwegian research council 1998-2000 as a Post doc. project. He cooperated with Phillip Currie (at that time in Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, Albarta, Canada ) and the late Karol Sabath (at that time Institute of Paleobiology, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland ). The project was to redescribe the skull of Tarbosaurus bataar based on the material housed in the Institute of Paleobiology, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, and making and comparison with North American tyrannosaurid taxa. The latest main work is on early primates as the Natural History Museum aquired the only complete fossil primate ever forund in 2007.
Beginning with 2000 he was employed at the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo where he works until now as an associate professor in vertebrate paleontology. At the University he teaches paleontology and evolutionary biology and supervise master students and Ph.D. students.
He has made fieldwork in Canada with Phillip Currie (1988, 1998, 1999) in Argentina with Phillip Currie and Rodolfo Coria (1999) and Mongolia with the two before mentioned and Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska (2002), in Kirgizia with the late Lev Nessov and Alexander Averianov (1992) and has travelled in China, Europe, Africa and Australia to visit paleontological sites. Fieldwork on the island Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago has been made on dinosaur tracks in 2002, and the last five field seasons (2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) 55 skeletons of Jurassic marine reptiles has been mapped and nine excavated by his group in cooperation with his colleague Hans Arne Nakrem.
He has so far published 23 peer reviewed scientific papers, of which 17 are on mammals, and 6 on dinosaurs, often co-authored with Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska.Other well known co-authors have been Phillip Currie, Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan, Luo Zhexi, Karol Sabath, Jesper Milan, Robert Presley, Alexander O. Averianov, Lev Nessov, Rinchen Barsbold, Jens Franzen, Phil Gingerich and Alexey Lopatin.
He is genuinely interested in outreach work and has published several popular books in Norwegian on subjects like human evolution, local geology, petrography and also a dinosaur book in Braille. He also got many popular publications in Norwegian (53) on paleontology, mineralogy and history of science. He is used a lot in Norwegian radio, TV and newspapers commenting on paleontological and evolutionary issues (about 100 times every year). He co-hosted a popular science talk show in Norwegian radio for half a year and has also had his own weekly part of a children's science show on TV. He was the project leader of the large exhibitions at the Natural History Museum named “The secret treasures of China ” in 2000 and “Deadly dinosaurs” in 2003.
In 1991 he married Merethe Frøyland who is an associate professor at the Norwegian Center for Science Education at the University of Oslo . The couple has one daughter born in 2003.
Main research areas:
• The anatomy and systematic of Multituberculate mammals
• The biology of Mesozoic mammals
• Theropod dinosaurs
• Marine Jurassic reptiles from Svalbard
• Early Primate anatomy
Smaller projects
• Paleocene mammal tracks from Svalbard
• Cretaceous dinosaur tracks from Svalbard