Helen Frances James (born May 22, 1956) is an American paleontologist and paleornithologist who has published extensively on the fossil birds of the Hawaiian Islands.
She is the curator in charge of birds in the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.[1] James was born in a U.S. Army hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas on May 22, 1956, to two ecologists.
[2] James found some Amerindian artifacts on these excursions, leading her to join the Northwest Arkansas Archaeological Association at age twelve.
[1] She also researched Amerindian skeletons in the museum's Physical Anthropology section and worked on the anatomy and systematics of hummingbirds with Richard Zusi.
She has also conducted research on the fossil vertebrates and paleoecology of Madagascar, the comparative osteology and phylogenetics of perching birds, and the evolution of island waterfowl.