Education
He attended the California Institute of Technology and Pomona College, then graduated in paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also earned his Doctor of Philosophy
He attended the California Institute of Technology and Pomona College, then graduated in paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also earned his Doctor of Philosophy
He was the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Through most of his four decades at the museum, he held a professorship in geosciences at Columbia University. With Susan K. Bell, he co-authored the 1997 book Classification of Mammals Above the Species Level, a comprehensive work genealogy of Mammalia, including the systematics, relationships, and occurrences of all Mammal taxa, living and extinct, down through the rank of genus.
McKenna was born in Pomona, California, the son of Bernice and Donald McKenna, a founding trustee of Claremont McKenna College in Southern California.
He was a resident of Englewood, New Jersey while he was at the American Museum of Natural History. A great-grandparent was a cousin of the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.
McKenna"s son Bruce is a screenwriter whose work has included the television miniseries The Pacific. Malcolm Carnegie McKenna died on March 3, 2008, in Boulder, Colorado.