Susan M. Kidwell | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | BS College of William & Mary MS, PhD Yale University |
Awards | Charles Schuchert Award Mary Clark Thompson Medal |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Paleontology Paleobiology Geology |
Institutions | University of Chicago |
Susan M. Kidwell is an American paleontologist and geologist at the University of Chicago. Her research has focused on the relationships between fossil concentrations and sequence stratigraphy, experimental taphonomy, and the implications of the very recent fossil record for understanding modern ecological changes.
Kidwell was educated at the College of William & Mary, where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in 1976. [1] She completed her graduate studies in geology at Yale University, receiving her Ph.D. in 1982. She was an assistant professor at the University of Arizona 1981 until 1985, before joining the faculty at the University of Chicago. She became associate professor in 1988 and professor in 1994. [2]
Susan Kidwell's research focuses on the formation of the fossil record. Early in her career, she explored the close connection between the formation of dense fossil concentrations and sequence stratigraphy. Her studies demonstrated the importance of slow sedimentation rates in allowing fossil remains to be concentrated. Subsequently, she was one of the pioneers in the field of experimental taphonomy, used to understand how recently dead organisms are preserved in the fossil record. Currently, Kidwell's research emphasizes how very young fossil records, that is, remains that are currently or recently accumulating on the seafloor or the land, can be used to understand how human activities have affected ecosystems.
In 1995, Kidwell received the Charles Schuchert Award, which is given by the Paleontological Society to persons under 40 "whose work reflects excellence and promise in paleontology". [3] In 1999 she received the Quantrell Prize for Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago. [4] In 2002, she was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2003, she was appointed William Rainey Harper Professor by the University of Chicago. In 2011 Kidwell was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2015 she received the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the United States National Academy of Sciences "for most important service to geology and paleontology". [5] In 2017 she received the Raymond C. Moore Medal for Paleontology from the Society for Sedimentary Geology in recognition of "Excellence in Paleontology". [6]
Taphonomy is the study of how organisms decay and become fossilized or preserved in the paleontological record. The term taphonomy was introduced to paleontology in 1940 by Soviet scientist Ivan Efremov to describe the study of the transition of remains, parts, or products of organisms from the biosphere to the lithosphere.
Joseph John Sepkoski Jr. was a University of Chicago paleontologist. Sepkoski studied the fossil record and the diversity of life on Earth. Sepkoski and David Raup produced a new understanding of extinction events, by developing a statistical approach to the study of taxonomic diversification. He suggested that the extinction of dinosaurs 66 mya was part of a cycle of mass extinctions that may have occurred every 26 million years. But his most important contribution was the identification of the "Big 5" mass extinctions, events that have shaped the evolution of life on earth.
Robert "Bob" Lynn Carroll was an American–Canadian vertebrate paleontologist who specialised in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians and reptiles.
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.
Raymond Cecil Moore was an American geologist and paleontologist. He is known for his work on Paleozoic crinoids, bryozoans, and corals. Moore was a member of US Geological Survey from 1913 until 1949. In 1919 he became professor at the University of Kansas (Lawrence). In 1953 Professor Moore organized the launch and became the first editor of the still ongoing multi-volume work Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. Contributors to the Treatise have included the world's specialists in the field. He served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1958. In 1970 he was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.
Amino acid dating is a dating technique used to estimate the age of a specimen in paleobiology, molecular paleontology, archaeology, forensic science, taphonomy, sedimentary geology and other fields. This technique relates changes in amino acid molecules to the time elapsed since they were formed.
In archaeology and paleontology a faunal assemblage is a group of animal fossils found together in a given stratum. In a non-deformed deposition, fossils are organized by stratum following the laws of uniformitarianism and superposition, which state that the natural phenomena observable today also apply to the paleontological record and that the oldest stratum will be at the bottom of a paleontological deposit.
Pseudhipparion is an extinct genus of three-toed horse endemic to North America during the Miocene. They were herding animals whose diet consisted of C3 plants. Fossils found in Georgia and Florida indicate that it was a lightweight horse, weighing up to 90 pounds. In 2005, fossils were unearthed in Oklahoma. Seven species of Pseudhipparion are known from the fossil record which were very small, following the trend of Bergmann's rule.
Mildred Adams Fenton trained in paleontology and geology at the University of Iowa. She coauthored dozens of general science books with her husband, Carroll Lane Fenton, including Records of Evolution (1924), Land We Live On (1944), and Worlds in the Sky (1963).
A megabias, or a taphonomic megabias, is a large-scale pattern in the quality of the fossil record that affects paleobiologic analysis at provincial to global levels and at timescales usually exceeding ten million years. It can result from major shifts in intrinsic and extrinsic properties of organisms, including morphology and behaviour in relation to other organisms, or shifts in the global environment, which can cause secular or long-term cyclic changes in preservation.
Helen Margaret Duncan was a geologist and paleontologist with the United States Geological Survey from 1945 to 1971, where she worked in the Paleontology and Stratigraphy Branch. Duncan was considered one of the strongest women in the Cincinnati geology department; her contributions to the Lipalian Research Foundation and the Pick and Hammer shows were additional work of her time. Duncan paved the path for many geology scholars to follow with her discoveries on fossil records and her studies in paleontology and stratigraphy.
Julia Anna Gardner, was an American geologist who worked for the United States Geological Survey for 32 years. She was known worldwide for her work in stratigraphy and mollusc paleontology.
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.
Isabel Patricia Montañez is a paleoclimatologist specializing in geochemical records of ancient climate change. She is a distinguished professor and a Chancellor's Leadership Professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences at University of California, Davis. As of 2021, Montañez is the director of the UC Davis Institute of the Environment.
The Raymond C. Moore Medal for Paleontology is awarded by the Society for Sedimentary Geology to persons who have made significant contributions in the field which have promoted the science of stratigraphy by research in paleontology and evolution and the use of fossils for interpretations of paleoecology. The award is named after Professor Raymond C. Moore, the American paleontogist who helped to found the society.
Christina Lochman-Balk was an American geologist who specialized in the study of Paleozoic era fossils, formerly known as Cambrian Paleontology. Lochman specifically dealt with Cambrian trilobites and invertebrates. During her career, it was not very common for women to pursue degrees or careers in geology, which was studied mostly by men. Along with her research, she also served as a lecturer and professor at the universities Mount Holyoke, University of Chicago and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. She received two degrees from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in Geology, and her doctorate at Johns Hopkins University in 1933. She married Robert Balk in 1947, who was a geology professor at the University of Chicago. Following her husband's death in 1955, she became a full professor as well as appointed head of the geology department of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1957. She retired from her position in 1972.
Susan Elise Riechert is an American behavioral ecologist known for her research in evolutionary biology, evolutionary game theory and the behavior of spiders. She is also known for her "biology in a box" teaching materials, used by hundreds of thousands of elementary and secondary school students in Tennessee.
Steven M. Holland is an American paleontologist and geologist at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on stratigraphic paleobiology, the application of event and sequence stratigraphy to a paleobiological understanding of the fossil record. With Mark Patzkowsky, he coauthored the book Stratigraphic Paleobiology.
Conservation paleobiology is a field of paleontology that applies the knowledge of the geological and paleoecological record to the conservation and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Despite the influence of paleontology on ecological sciences can be traced back at least at the 18th century, the current field has been established by the work of K.W. Flessa and G.P. Dietl in the first decade of the 21st century. The discipline utilizes paleontological and geological data to understand how biotas respond to climate and other natural and anthropogenic environmental change. These information are then used to address the challenges faced by modern conservation biology, like understanding the extinction risk of endangered species, providing baselines for restoration and modelling future scenarios for species range's contraction or expansion.
Emily Stanley is an American professor of limnology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was named a 2018 Ecological Society of America Fellow and her research focuses on the ecology of freshwater ecosystems.