As a self-described “dinosaur kid”, Sierra has been interested in paleontology from day one. During her time as a geology major at Macalester College in Minnesota, she studied dinosaur coprolites from the Campanian Two Medicine formation of Montana, and assisted in taphonomic studies of microfossil assemblages from the Two Medicine as well. Then, as a graduate student at the University of Georgia, she studied the sequence stratigraphy of the Jurassic Sundance Seaway, and the effects of environmental changes on the fossil communities within it. After her graduate work, she spent a few years working as a geoscientist in the energy industry, but ultimately her love of fossils brought her here to the museum to manage the Madagascar fossil collection.
