Museum director and scientist, Dr. Michael A. Mares has a rodent, bat, and parasite named after him. The world expert on desert rodent evolution, Mares is responsible for the discovery of many species new to science. He has done field research in the deserts of Argentina, Iran, Egypt, India, Namibia, South Africa, Brazil, and the United States. He is a retired professor of zoology at the University of Oklahoma and the former director of the Sam Noble Museum, one of the world’s greatest university natural history museums. Under Mares' leadership, and after raising more than $45 million, the nearly 200,000-square-foot Museum opened in 2000. Since that time, more than three million guests have visited the Museum.

An Albuquerque, New Mexico, native, Mares earned his bachelors of science degree in Biology at the University of New Mexico, masters from Fort Hays State University in Kansas, and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. He is an evolutionary biologist, a systematist, an  explorer for unknown species of mammals, and an expert on museums. Mares has published 13 books and more than 200 scientific papers. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, former president of the Natural Science Collections Alliance, former president of the American Society of Mammalogists, and an inductee of the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a Ford Foundation Fellow, and a National Chicano Fellow. He has served on many national committees, as well as the Congressional Commission on the Future of the Smithsonian Institution.

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