Loren E. Babcock

Last updated

Dr. Loren E. Babcock (born May 26, 1961) is an American geologist. He is professor of Earth Science at Ohio State University. Babcock has written over 125 scientific articles and the textbook, Visualizing Earth History. He researches topics in processes of fossilization and the evolutionary history of trilobites and other Cambrian fossils. A fellow from the Geological Society of America, Babcock was the recipient of the Charles Schuchert Award for Excellence and Promise in Paleontology and the Erasmus Haworth Award for Distinguished Alumni Honors in Geology. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 1990. [1]

In 2008, he was one of a team of researchers who discovered the oldest footprints ever found, over 570 million years old, in Nevada. Although he was uncertain, Babcock believed that they came from an arthropod species. [2]

Related Research Articles

The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organization, from kingdoms to species, and individual organisms and molecules, such as DNA and proteins. The similarities between all present day organisms indicate the presence of a common ancestor from which all known species, living and extinct, have diverged through the process of evolution. More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates on the number of Earth's current species range from 10 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86 percent have not yet been described. However, a May 2016 scientific report estimates that 1 trillion species are currently on Earth, with only one-thousandth of one percent described.

The Neoproterozoic Era is the unit of geologic time from 1 billion to 541 million years ago.

Ohio State University Public university in Columbus, Ohio, United States

The Ohio State University, commonly Ohio State, OSU, or tOSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. The flagship of the University System of Ohio, it is considered a Public Ivy, and has been ranked by major institutional rankings as among the best public universities in the United States. Founded in 1870 as the state's land-grant university and the ninth university in Ohio with the Morrill Act of 1862, Ohio State was originally known as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College and focused on various agricultural and mechanical disciplines but it developed into a comprehensive university under the direction of then-Governor and later U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes, and in 1878 the Ohio General Assembly passed a law changing the name to "the Ohio State University" and broadening the scope of the university. Admission standards tightened and became greatly more selective throughout the 2000s and 2010s.

Hadean First eon of geological time, beginning with the formation of the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago

The Hadean is a geologic eon of Earth history preceding the Archean. It began with the formation of the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago and ended, as defined by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), 4 billion years ago. As of 2016, the ICS describes its status as "informal". The term was coined after the Greek mythical underworld Hades, by American geologist Preston Cloud, originally to label the period before the earliest-known rocks on Earth. W. Brian Harland later coined an almost synonymous term, the Priscoan Period, from priscus, the Latin word for 'ancient'. Other, older texts refer to the eon as the Pre-Archean.

Ohio University Public university in Athens, Ohio, United States

Ohio University is a public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, it was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation and subsequently approved for the territory in 1802 and state in 1804, opening for students in 1809. Ohio University is the oldest university in Ohio, the tenth oldest public university in the United States and the 32nd oldest among public and private universities. As of fall 2020, the university's total enrollment at Athens was slightly more than 18,000, while the all-campus enrollment was just over 28,000.

Wallace Smith Broecker American geochemist (1931–2019)

Wallace "Wally" Smith Broecker was an American geochemist. He was the Newberry Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, a scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and a sustainability fellow at Arizona State University. He developed the idea of a global "conveyor belt" linking the circulation of the global ocean and made major contributions to the science of the carbon cycle and the use of chemical tracers and isotope dating in oceanography. Broecker popularized the term "global warming". He received the Crafoord Prize and the Vetlesen Prize.

Marie Tharp American oceanographer and cartographer

Marie Tharp was an American geologist and oceanographic cartographer who, in partnership with Bruce Heezen, created the first scientific map of the Atlantic Ocean floor. Tharp's work revealed the detailed topography and multi-dimensional geographical landscape of the ocean bottom. Her work included a more precise cartographic representation of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and her discovery of the rift valley along its axis, causing a paradigm shift in earth science that led to acceptance of the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift.

Paul E. Olsen

Paul E. Olsen is an American paleontologist and author and co-author of a large number of technical papers. Growing up as a teenager in Livingston, New Jersey, he was instrumental in Riker Hill Fossil Site being named a National Natural Landmark as a teenager by sending President Richard Nixon a dinosaur footprint cast from the site. He received a M. Phil. and a Ph.D. in Biology at Yale University in 1984. His thesis was on the Newark Supergroup.

Lonnie Thompson American paleoclimatologist

Lonnie Thompson, is an American paleoclimatologist and Distinguished University Professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University. He has achieved global recognition for his drilling and analysis of ice cores from ice caps and mountain glaciers in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. He and his wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, run the ice core paleoclimatology research group at the Byrd Polar Research Center.

Beneski Museum of Natural History Massachusetts museum

The Beneski Museum of Natural History, Amherst College is located on the campus of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. It showcases fossils and minerals collected locally and abroad, many by past and present students and professors. The Museum is located in the Beneski Earth Sciences Building, completed in 2006. It is a member of Museums10.

Paleontological Research Institution

The Paleontological Research Institution, or PRI, is a paleontological organization in Ithaca, New York with a mission including both research and education. PRI is affiliated with Cornell University, houses one of the largest fossil collections in North America, and publishes, among other things, the oldest journal of paleontology in the western hemisphere, Bulletins of American Paleontology.

Edward A. "Ted" Irving, was a geologist and scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. His studies of paleomagnetism provided the first physical evidence of the theory of continental drift. His efforts contributed to our understanding of how mountain ranges, climate, and life have changed over the past millions of years.

Leonard R. Brand American scientist

Leonard Brand is a Seventh-day Adventist creationist, biologist, paleontologist, and author. He is a professor and past chair of Loma Linda University Department of Earth and Biological Sciences.

Creation Evidence Museum Creationist museum in Texas

The Creation Evidence Museum of Texas, originally Creation Evidences Museum, is a creationist museum in Glen Rose in Somervell County in central Texas, United States. Founded in 1984 by Carl Baugh for the purpose of researching and displaying exhibits that support creationism, it portrays the Earth as six thousand years old and humans coexisting with dinosaurs, disputing that the Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old and dinosaurs became extinct 65.5 million years before human beings arose.

Idaho Museum of Natural History Natural history museum in Idaho, United States

The Idaho Museum of Natural History (IMNH) is the official state natural history museum of Idaho, located on the campus of Idaho State University (ISU) in Pocatello. Founded in 1934, it has collections in anthropology, vertebrate paleontology, earth science, and the life sciences. Additionally, it contains an archive of documents and ethnographic photographs.

Martin Lockley Welsh palaeontologist

Martin G. Lockley is a Welsh palaeontologist. He was educated in the United Kingdom where he obtained degrees and post-doctoral experience in Geology in the 1970s. Since 1980 he has been a professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, (UCD) and is currently a Professor Emeritus. He is best known for work on fossil footprints and was former director of the Dinosaur Tracks Museum at UCD. He is an Associate Curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and Research Associate at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. During his years at UCD he earned a BA in 2007 in Spanish with a minor in Religious Studies, became a member of the Scientific and Medical Network and taught and published on the evolution of consciousness.

Alexander Halliday British geochemist and academic (born 1952)

Sir Alexander Norman Halliday is a British geochemist, an academic who is the Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He joined the Earth Institute in April 2018, after spending more than a decade at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, during which time he was dean of science and engineering. He is also a Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

Paleontology in Pennsylvania

Paleontology in Pennsylvania refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The geologic column of Pennsylvania spans from the Precambrian to Quaternary. During the early part of the Paleozoic, Pennsylvania was submerged by a warm, shallow sea. This sea would come to be inhabited by creatures like brachiopods, bryozoans, crinoids, graptolites, and trilobites. The armored fish Palaeaspis appeared during the Silurian. By the Devonian the state was home to other kinds of fishes. On land, some of the world's oldest tetrapods left behind footprints that would later fossilize. Some of Pennsylvania's most important fossil finds were made in the state's Devonian rocks. Carboniferous Pennsylvania was a swampy environment covered by a wide variety of plants. The latter half of the period was called the Pennsylvanian in honor of the state's rich contemporary rock record. By the end of the Paleozoic the state was no longer so swampy. During the Mesozoic the state was home to dinosaurs and other kinds of reptiles, who left behind fossil footprints. Little is known about the early to mid Cenozoic of Pennsylvania, but during the Ice Age it seemed to have a tundra-like environment. Local Delaware people used to smoke mixtures of fossil bones and tobacco for good luck and to have wishes granted. By the late 1800s Pennsylvania was the site of formal scientific investigation of fossils. Around this time Hadrosaurus foulkii of neighboring New Jersey became the first mounted dinosaur skeleton exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The Devonian trilobite Phacops rana is the Pennsylvania state fossil.

Robert Berner American scientist

Robert Arbuckle Berner was an American scientist known for his contributions to the modeling of the carbon cycle. He taught Geology and Geophysics from 1965 to 2007 at Yale University, where he latterly served as Professor Emeritus until his death. His work on sedimentary rocks led to the co-founding of the BLAG model of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which takes into account both geochemical and biological contributions to the carbon cycle.

Ellen Mosley-Thompson is a glaciologist and climatologist. She is a Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University (OSU) and Director of the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at OSU. She is known as a pioneer in the use of ice cores from the Polar Regions for paleoclimatic research and is an influential figure in climate science. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.

References

  1. "Loren Babcock". Ohio State University . Retrieved September 13, 2015.
  2. "Oldest Footprints on Earth Found". Live Science. October 5, 2008. Retrieved September 13, 2015.