Victoria M. Arbour

Victoria Megan Arbour is a Canadian evolutionary biologist and vertebrate palaeontologist at Royal BC Museum, where she is Curator of Palaeontology. An "expert on the armoured dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs", Arbour analyzes fossils and creates 3-D computer models. She named the possible pterosaur Gwawinapterus from Hornby Island, and a partial ornithischian dinosaur from Sustut Basin, British Columbia (now named Ferrisaurus), and has participated in the naming of the ankylosaurs Zuul,

Early life and education Born in 1983, Arbour is from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Arbour completed a B.Sc. Honours Thesis supervised by Milton Graves, An ornithischian dinosaur from the Sustut Basin, British Columbia, Canada, and graduated from Dalhousie University in 2006. She completed her master's thesis, Evolution, biomechanics, and function of the tail club of ankylosaurid dinosaurs (Ornithischia: Thyreophora) in 2009, and her Ph.D. thesis, Systematics, evolution, and biogeography of the ankylosaurid dinosaurs, in 2014, both advised by paleontologist Philip Currie at the University of Alberta.

She previously worked as a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and Royal Ontario Museum. As the top-ranked female candidate for the fellowship, she also received a supplement available to applicants who demonstrate "exemplary involvement in science promotion, mentorship, and leadership".

From 2014 to 2016 she was a postdoctoral researcher with a joint appointment at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University.

Arbour primarily studies dinosaurs in the group Ankylosauria, including biomechanical analyses of tail clubs. Arbour has studied microfossils from Nova Scotia. Zaraapelta, Patagopelta, and publishing a new phylogenetic analysis on the interrelationships of Ankylosauridae. Philip Currie credits Arbour for involving the paleontology discipline with the University of Alberta's "Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science & Technology", making study of dinosaurs more appealing to women. 2019 Ferrisaurus sustutensis gen. et sp. nov. Arbour & Evans 2017 Zuul crurivastator gen. et sp. nov. Arbour & Evans 2014 Zaraapelta nomadis gen. et sp. nov. Arbour, Currie, & Badamgarav 2014 Ziapelta sanjuanensis gen. et sp. nov. Arbour, Burns, Sullivan, Lucas, Cantrell, Fry, & Suazo 2011 Gwawinapterus beardi gen. et sp. nov. Arbour & Currie