L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science - Victoria Arbour
2016

Victoria is an evolutionary biologist and an expert on the armoured dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs. These dinosaurs possessed unusual tails that were modified into axe-like weapons, and Victoria’s work has covered the evolutionary origin of ankylosaur tail clubs, the biomechanics of tail club impacts, and what features constrain the evolution of tail weapons. Her research also investigates the biogeography of dinosaurs and how changing climate influenced dinosaur distributions in North America and Asia. Victoria completed a BSc at Dalhousie University, an MSc and PhD at the University of Alberta, and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences/North Carolina State University (in Raleigh, NC) before moving back to Canada to take up an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship at the Royal Ontario Museum/University of Toronto. She helped create the massive open on¬line course Dino 101, reaching over 70,000 learners around the globe. She was also featured in the recent television documentary Dino Hunt Canada, and has served as a scientific consultant for the film Walking with Dinosaurs 3D, the documentary Clash of the Dinosaurs, and the video game Saurian.