Helen Frances James
| Helen Frances James | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 22, 1956 Hot Springs, Arkansas, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Paleontology, Ornithology |
| Alma mater |
University of Arkansas University of Oxford |
Helen Frances James (born May 22, 1956) is an American paleontologist and paleornithologist who has published extensively on the fossil birds of the Hawaiian Islands. She is the curator in charge of birds, in the Department of Vertebrate Zoology, at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
James was born in a U.S. Army hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to two ecologists. She was brought up on a farm at the base of Kessler Mountain near Fayetteville, in the Arkansas Ozarks. At age eight, her family moved up slope to a custom-built house in the woods, where she developed an interest in natural history and archaeology. James' parents encouraged an appreciation for nature in her and her sisters, taking them on trips within the Ozarks and to the American southwest and Mexico. James found some Amerindian artifacts on these excursions, leading her to join the Northwest Arkansas Archaeological Association at age twelve. James' father accepted a one-year Fulbright Fellowship and the family moved to Cape Coast, Ghana.
On returning from Ghana, at the age of 16, James attended the University of Arkansas, graduating in 1977 after studying archaeology and biological anthropology.
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