Robert M. Sullivan

On occasion, Sullivan's father would drop him off at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, where he would spend hours in the dinosaur gallery viewing the various fossil vertebrates.

His grandmother was especially supportive of his desire to become a paleontologist and drove him to a well-known Devonian roadside outcrop in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, where he would spend hours collecting fossil bryozoans, rugose corals and brachiopods.

In the mid 1980s, Sullivan spent time working in the Paleocene Nacimiento Formation looking for fossil lizards, with little luck, and occasionally would wander down section into the Upper Cretaceous rocks of the San Juan Basin.

He began intensive fieldwork in the Upper Cretaceous in 1995 with occasional interruptions, spending numerous summers collecting fossil vertebrates from the Fruitland, Kirtland and Ojo Alamo (Naashoibito Member) formations.

This fieldwork, which spanned over two decades, resulted in numerous unique and significant discoveries, including the recovery of New Mexico's first pterosaur Navajodactylus boerei, along with many new dinosaur species.