For Immediate Release:  April 12, 2006
Contact:  Marsha Nishi Mullan     
610-328-8535      
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news/

Swarthmore College Senior Wins
Prestigious NSF Fellowship

Tyler Lyson of Marmarth, N.D., a senior at Swarthmore College, has won a National Science Foundation Fellowship to be used for graduate study in vertebrate paleontology at Yale University.  Lyson will enter the Ph.D. program at Yale in the Department of Geology and Geophysics in the fall.  The son of Molly and Ranse Lyson, he is a 2002 graduate of Baker High School in Baker, Mont.

Lyson is a biology major with a philosophy minor.  He is also a member of the varsity track and field and indoor track teams and is a Philip Evans Scholar.  Lyson, who has been digging and studying dinosaur and turtle fossils since he was 12 and has worked alongside and consulted with some of the world's best known paleontologists, is cofounder of the Marmarth Research Foundation.  The Foundation conducts digs and provides students and volunteers with hands-on field and lab work on fossils.

Located near Philadelphia, Swarthmore is a highly selective liberal arts college whose mission combines academic rigor with social responsibility.  Swarthmore, with an enrollment of 1,450, is consistently ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country.