Sankar Chatterjee is Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Geosciences and Curator of Paleontology at Texas Tech University. He received his Ph.D. from Calcutta University and was a Postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and George Washington University before he moved to Texas Tech. His current research focuses on astrobiology and the origin of life. He is an elected fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Association of the Advancement of Science. He led several expeditions to Antarctica, China, India, and the American Southwest in search of dinosaurs and early birds. His previous book, The Rise of Birds (Johns Hopkins University Press), has been translated into many languages.