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Richard John Aldridge | |
---|---|
Born | 16 December 1945 |
Died | 4 February 2014 68) | (aged
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | University of Southampton |
Awards |
|
Scientific career | |
Fields | Palaeontology |
Institutions | |
Doctoral advisor | Ronald Leyshon Austin |
Doctoral students | Philip Donoghue M. Paul Smith |
Richard John Aldridge (16 December 1945 – 4 February 2014) was a British palaeontologist and academic, who was Bennett Professor of Geology at the University of Leicester. [1] [2]
Aldridge's career began at Southampton University before moving to a temporary lectureship at University College London. He then joined the University of Nottingham where he remained until 1989, having reached the rank of Reader in Palaeontology. Following the Oxburgh Review of Earth Sciences, he moved to the University of Leicester. He served two terms as Head of Department, and was F.W. Bennett Professor of Geology from 2002 until he retired in 2011. [1]
Aldridge's research has been focused primarily on the conodont biostratigraphy [3] [4] and palaeobiology and one of his seminal contributions has been to uncover the vertebrate nature of the long-enigmatic conodont animal, principally in collaboration with Derek Briggs and Euan Clarkson. This was achieved through careful analysis of skeletal remains, but also through analysis of rare soft tissue remains of conodonts. [5] [6] [7] This led naturally to Aldridge's later research focus which was fossil Lagerstätten. [8]
Aldridge was awarded the Pander Medal of the Pander society in 2006. He was President of the Palaeontological Association and of the British Micropalaeontological Society (1995-1998).
Conodonts are an extinct group of agnathan (jawless) vertebrates resembling eels, classified in the class Conodonta. For many years, they were known only from their tooth-like oral elements, which are usually found in isolation and are now called conodont elements. Knowledge about soft tissues remains limited. They existed in the world's oceans for over 300 million years, from the Cambrian to the beginning of the Jurassic. Conodont elements are widely used as index fossils, fossils used to define and identify geological periods. The animals are also called Conodontophora to avoid ambiguity.
Agnatha is an infraphylum of jawless fish in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, consisting of both present (cyclostomes) and extinct species. Among recent animals, cyclostomes are sister to all vertebrates with jaws, known as gnathostomes.
Derek Ernest Gilmor Briggs is an Irish palaeontologist and taphonomist based at Yale University. Briggs is one of three palaeontologists, along with Harry Blackmore Whittington and Simon Conway Morris, who were key in the reinterpretation of the fossils of the Burgess Shale. He is the Yale University G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, and former Director of the Peabody Museum.
Promissum is an extinct genus of conodonts, primitive chordates, that lived during the Upper Ordovician period.
Philip Conrad James Donoghue FRS is a British palaeontologist and Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Bristol.
Mark Andrew Purnell is a British palaeontologist, Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester.
The Pander Society is an informal organisation founded in 1967 for the promotion of the study of conodont palaeontology. It publishes an annual newsletter. Although there are regular meetings of the Pander Society, at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America, at European Conodont Symposia, and elsewhere, any meeting of three or more "Panderers" is considered an official meeting of the "Pander Society". The society is headed by the Chief Panderer, currently Maria Cristina Perri of the Università di Bologna. The society confers two awards, the Pander Medal for a lifetime of achievement in conodont palaeontology, and the Hinde Medal for an outstanding contribution to conodont palaeontology by a young Panderer.
Prioniodontida, also known as the "complex conodonts", is a large clade of conodonts that includes two major evolutionary grades; the Prioniodinina and the Ozarkodinina. It includes many of the more famous conodonts, such as the giant ordovician Promissum (Prioniodinina) from the Soom Shale and the Carboniferous specimens from the Granton Shrimp bed (Ozarkodinina). They are euconodonts, in that their elements are composed of two layers; the crown and the basal body, and are assumed to be a clade.
Euan N.K. Clarkson FRSE is a British palaeontologist and writer.
Paleontology or palaeontology is the study of prehistoric life forms on Earth through the examination of plant and animal fossils. This includes the study of body fossils, tracks (ichnites), burrows, cast-off parts, fossilised feces (coprolites), palynomorphs and chemical residues. Because humans have encountered fossils for millennia, paleontology has a long history both before and after becoming formalized as a science. This article records significant discoveries and events related to paleontology that occurred or were published in the year 2014.
Luprisca incuba is an extinct species of ostracod crustacean. It was described as a new species in 2014, following discovery and analysis of fossilized specimens in mudstone rocks from New York, United States. A team of researchers from the universities of Yale and Kansas, Oxford and the Japan Agency of Marine Science and Technology made the discovery.
The Micropalaeontological Society (TMS) is a scientific society based in the UK with international membership. It was founded in 1970 for the promotion of the study of micropalaeontology, the study of microscopic fossils.
George Jennings Hinde was a British geologist and paleontologist.
The conodont feeding apparatus is a series of phosphatic-mineralized elements, resembling a set of “teeth”, which are found lining the oral surface of the conodont animal.
The Granton Shrimp Bed is a fossil-bearing deposit exposed on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, in Scotland. It is classified as a Konservat-Lagerstätten because of the exceptional quality of preservation of the fossils and is dominated by crustaceans; the deposit dates back to the Lower Carboniferous, some 359 to 323 million years ago.
Panderodus Is an extinct genus of jawless fish belonging to the order Conodonta. This genus had a long temporal range, surviving from the middle Ordovician to late Devonian. In 2021, extremely rare body fossils of Panderodus from the Waukesha Biota were described, and it revealed that Panderodus had a more thick body compared to the more slender bodies of more advanced conodonts. It also revealed that this conodont was a macrophagous predator, meaning it went after large prey.
Thanahita is a genus of extinct lobopodian and known from the middle Silurian Herefordshire Lagerstätte at the England–Wales border in UK. It is monotypic and contains one species, Thanahita distos. Discovered in 2018, it is estimated to have lived around 430 million years ago and is the only known extinct lobopodian in Europe, and the first Silurian lobopodian known worldwide.
Hallucigeniidae is a family of extinct worms belonging to the group Lobopodia that originated during the Cambrian explosion. It is based on the species Hallucigenia sparsa, the fossil of which was discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott in 1911 from the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. The name Hallucigenia was created by Simon Conway Morris in 1977, from which the family was erected after discoveries of other hallucigeniid worms from other parts of the world. Classification of these lobopods and their retatives are still controversial, and the family consists of at least four genera.
Coalbrookdale Formation, earlier known as Wenlock Shale or Wenlock Shale Formation and also referred to as Herefordshire Lagerstätte in palaeontology, is a fossil-rich deposit (Konservat-Lagerstätte) in Powys and Herefordshire at the England–Wales border in UK. It belongs to the Wenlock Series of the Silurian Period within the Homerian Age. It is known for its well-preserved fossils of various invertebrate animals many of which are in their three-dimensional structures. Some of the fossils are regarded as earliest evidences and evolutionary origin of some of the major groups of modern animals.
Carbotubulus is a genus of extinct worm belonging to the group Lobopodia and known from the Carboniferous Carbondale Formation of the Mazon Creek area in Illinois, US. A monotypic genus, it contains one species Carbotubulus waloszeki. It was discovered and described by Joachim T. Haug, Georg Mayer, Carolin Haug, and Derek E.G. Briggs in 2012. With an age of about 300 million years, it is the first long-legged lobopodian discovered after the period of Cambrian explosion.