Biographical Note:
Canada's foremost authority on Ice Age mammals and long-time Yukon researcher, Dr. Richard Harington initially trained as a physical geographer. He received a graduate degree from McGill University in zoology, completing his thesis on the history, distribution and ecology of the muskoxen. His work as a wildlife biologist brought him to the Arctic in the 1960s where he studied the biology and ecology of polar bears.
After working for five years for the Canadian Wildlife Service, he joined the National Museum of Natural Sciences, now the Canadian Museum of Nature, in 1965. Dr. Harington began his work in the northern Yukon just over 30 years ago, completing his Ph.D. in 1977 on Pleistocene mammals of the Yukon Territory.
Subsequent research along ancient Yukon riverbeds and in the permafrost of the Klondike gold fields helped to identify more than 60 species of mammals that occupied the North tens of thousands of years ago. His discovery of bones of extinct Ice Age species apparently modified by people resulted in what Old Crow residents refer to as a "bone rush" by teams of archaeologists intent on studying the new evidence for early human populations in the northern Yukon.
In the 1980s Dr. Harington directed the museum's Climatic Change in Canada Project, culminating in two international conferences and a book entitled "The year without a summer? World Climate in 1816". He also edited "Canada's Missing Dimension: Science and History in the Canadian Arctic Islands" in 1990.
Dr. Harington was presented in 1987 with the Massey Medal, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society's premier award, for his outstanding contribution to the knowledge of geography of Canada. He has served as a scientific advisor to many institutions, most recently as a member of the scientific advisory panel of the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre. Dr. Harington is an accomplished writer and editor of various publications, including the popular series "Beringian Research Notes", which is produced by the Yukon Heritage Branch.
For the last six years he has led teams excavating vertebrates
and other fossils at a Pliocene beaver-pond site near Strathcona
Fiord on Ellesmere Island. Dr. Harington is currently Curator
of Quaternary Zoology at the Canadian Museum of Nature.