Tara Sauranis

Tara Sauranis is a Celestial Elven naturalist from the Aurlûnor Velande. She resides in the province of Nir. She is the head curator of the Lhumar Imperial Museum of Natural History, and a senior paleontologist in the Rathnir Paleontological Society.

Early Life and Education
Born in a village in northern Nir in 887 ACA, Sauranis was very close to nature at a young age. She would skip her typical schooling to instead wander the woods and fields, drawing flowers and leaves and collecting all kinds of bones, shells, and stones she would find. Despite this, she did very well on her exams, preferring to do most of her learning on her own.

Graduating as the valedictorian of her small-town school, she was awarded a chance to enroll in a prestigious university at the imperial capital of Lhumar. It was here that she quickly got into research, spending much of her free time in laboratories and libraries. She would frequently skip out on parties and festivals to do lab work, much to her friends' dismay. One rumor is that she spent a week straight in the paleontological lab removing fossils from a plaster jacket, sleeping in a burlap sack with a sauropod femur as a pillow.

She received two B.A's in Geology and Zoology at 42, and at the age of 45 she was awarded a Ph.D in Biological Sciences- a non-specific degree, but one suited for her wide range of study.

Career
Having graduated from university, she still remained with the school for years, tutoring students and eventually getting a job teaching. She has also published and/or contributed to several research papers covering various fields. Some of her research topics have included archaeology, botany, ecology, mineralogy, paleontology, volcanology, zoology, and more.

In 936 ACA, with the Velereth's blessing, she established the Lhumar Imperial Museum of Natural History, where she is the lead curator. From here she plans on conducting and organizing more research, as well as showing her finds to the public and teaching the people of the Velande and Rathnir as a whole.

Trivia

 * Her name is pronounced similarly to the phrase "Pterosaur anus", hence her nickname "pterodactyl-butt". She hates being called this, but her friends insist. It is ironic as well, considering her work in paleontology.
 * She is rumored to have become an alcoholic after the loss of the Fislankemys holotype in a bandit raid.
 * One of her most famous discoveries was actually a redescription of the famous "turtle" of Fornost; it was not in fact a turtle but a species of Peioraid she had christened as Megalonectes gebelistanicus.
 * Her favorite food is pork dumplings.