Stephen Andrew Czerkas (born September 19, 1951, in Alhambra, California; died January 22, 2015) was an American sculptor and paleontologist. He frequently worked as a contributor to both museums and the motion picture industry, and was later the director and co-founder of The Dinosaur Museum, which purchased the Archaeoraptor fossil chimera.[1][2] His life-sized replicas of dinosaurs, including members of the Deinonychus and Allosaurus genera, were among the first to incorporate accurate feathering and dorsal spines.[3][4]
He is perhaps best known for his part in the Archaeoraptor controversy, in which Czerkas purchased a part-bird, part-dinosaur specimen for The Dinosaur Museum from a Chinese dealer.[9] This fossil specimen courted a great deal of controversy, after which it was determined that the fossil had been glued together as a composite of multiple species.[10][11][12] This controversy continues to circulate in creationist media sources as a purported example of widespread fraud in the evolutionary sciences.[13][14][15]
Czerkas had a wife, Sylvia. Stephen Czerkas died on January 22, 2015, of liver cancer.[4][16]
