George Gaylord Simpson was an American paleontologist. Simpson was perhaps the most influential paleontologist of the twentieth century, and a major participant in the modern synthesis, contributing Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), The Meaning of Evolution (1949) and The Major Features of Evolution (1953). He was an expert on extinct mammals and their intercontinental migrations. Simpson was extraordinarily knowledgeable about Mesozoic fossil mammals and fossil mammals of North and South America. He anticipated such concepts as punctuated equilibrium and dispelled the myth that the evolution of the horse was a linear process culminating in the modern Equus caballus. He coined the word hypodigm in 1940, and published extensively on the taxonomy of fossil and extant mammals. Simpson was influentially, and incorrectly, opposed to Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift, but accepted the theory of plate tectonics when the evidence became conclusive.
Alfred Sherwood Romer was an American paleontologist and biologist and a specialist in vertebrate evolution.
Luis V. Rey is a Spanish-Mexican artist and illustrator. A 1977 graduate of the San Carlos Academy, part of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, he was among the contributors of the weekly Barcelona satirical magazine El Papus.
Robert "Bob" Lynn Carroll was an American–Canadian vertebrate paleontologist who specialised in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians and reptiles.
Mary R. Dawson was a vertebrate paleontologist and curator emeritus at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Thomas D. Carr is a vertebrate paleontologist who received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 2005. He is now a member of the biology faculty at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Much of his work centers on tyrannosauroid dinosaurs. Carr published the first quantitative analysis of tyrannosaurid ontogeny in 1999, establishing that several previously recognized genera and species of tyrannosaurids were in fact juveniles of other recognized taxa. Carr shared the Lanzendorf Prize for scientific illustration at the 2000 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference for the artwork in this article. In 2005, he and two colleagues described and named Appalachiosaurus, a late-surviving basal tyrannosauroid found in Alabama. He is also scientific advisor to the Dinosaur Discovery Museum in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Malcolm Carnegie McKenna (1930–2008) was an American paleontologist and author on the subject.
William Alvin Clemens Jr. was a paleontologist at the University of California at Berkeley. He was faculty of the Department of Paleontology from 1967, then the Department of Integrative Biology from 1994 to his retirement and curator of the UC Museum of Paleontology. Clemens was also director of the museum (1987–1989) and chair of the Department of Paleontology (1987–1989). He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1974–75), a U.S. Senior Scientist Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Romer-Simpson Medal (2006), and was made a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.
Zhou Mingzhen, also known as Minchen Chow, was a Chinese paleomammalogist and vertebrate paleontologist. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a research professor for mammalian paleontology in the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing. He received the Romer-Simpson Medal in 1993.
Mauricio Antón Ortuzar is a paleoartist and illustrator specializing in the scientific reconstruction of extinct life, well known for his influential paintings of hominids, extinct carnivores and other vertebrate fossil groups. His works illustrate a great number of books, scientific papers, private collections and museums in many parts of the world. He currently works in association with the Natural Science Museum in Madrid.
The Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for meritorious work in zoology or paleontology study published in a three to five year period." Named after Daniel Giraud Elliot, it was first awarded in 1917.
Edwin Harris "Ned" Colbert was a distinguished American vertebrate paleontologist and prolific researcher and author.
Brian Cooley is a Canadian sculptor, specializing in dinosaurs.
Johanna Gabrielle Ottilie "Tilly" Edinger was a German-American paleontologist and the founder of paleoneurology.
Anna Katherine "Kay" Behrensmeyer is an American taphonomist and paleoecologist. She is a pioneer in the study of the fossil records of terrestrial ecosystems and engages in geological and paleontological field research into the ecological context of human evolution in East Africa. She is Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology in the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). At the museum, she is co-director of the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems program and an associate of the Human Origins Program.
Meemann Chang also known as Zhang Miman, is a Chinese paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP). She completed her undergraduate studies at Moscow University and completed her PhD thesis entitled 'The braincase of Youngolepis, a Lower Devonian crossopterygian from Yunnan, south-western China' at Stockholm University. She was the first woman to become head of IVPP in 1983. For her many career achievements, she received an honorary degree from the University of Chicago in 2011 and the Romer-Simpson Medal from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 2016.
Guntupalli Veera Raghavendra Prasad is an Indian paleontologist and former head of the department of geology at the University of Delhi. He is known for his studies on the Mesozoic vertebrate groups of India and is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences, India as well as The World Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences in 2003.
Coniophis is an extinct genus of snakes from the late Cretaceous period. The type species, Coniophis precedes, was about 7 cm long and had snake-like teeth and body form, with a skull and a largely lizard-like bone structure. It probably ate small vertebrates. The fossil remains of Coniophis were first discovered at the end of the 19th century in the Lance Formation of the US state of Wyoming, and were described in 1892 by Othniel Charles Marsh. For the genus Coniophis, a number of other species have been described. Their affiliation is, however, poorly secured, mostly based on vertebrae descriptions from only a few fossils.
Paul David Polly is an American paleontologist and the Robert R. Shrock Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Indiana University as well as the sitting chair of the department.
Sergey Krasovskiy is a Ukrainian freelance paleoartist best known for his artistic reconstructions of dinosaurs. He was awarded the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's John J. Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize in 2017.
