Alfred Romer

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Alfred Sherwood Romer (born December 28, 1894 in White Plains , New York , † November 5, 1973 ) was an American paleontologist . His area of expertise was the evolution of vertebrates .

Life

Alfred Sherwood Romer was born in White Plains, New York, where he graduated from high school. After that he worked for a year as a clerk at the railroad and then decided to go to college. With the help of a scholarship from Amherst College , he was able to study history and German literature there. He discovered his enthusiasm for natural history fossils through frequent visits to the American Museum of Natural History . When the First World War broke out , he volunteered for military service and was immediately deployed to France.

In 1919 he came back to New York and began studying biology at Columbia University , which he completed two years later with a doctorate. He then worked as a research assistant at Bellevue Medical School at New York University, teaching in particular histology , embryology and general anatomy . In 1923 he received a call from the University of Chicago , where he met his future wife Ruth, with whom he had three children.

In Chicago he found conditions that enabled him to intensify his main interest - paleontology. From 1925 to 1935, 37 specialist articles dealing with this topic were written.

In 1934 he was appointed professor of biology at Harvard University . In 1946 he became director of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (Agassiz Museum). He died after a brief illness on November 5, 1973.

In the zoological system, he founded the class of the meat- floss Sarcopterygii ROMER in 1955.

Romer gap

The "Romer gap" (English Romer's Gap ) describes the fossil-poor period 359 to 345 million years ago after the transition from Devonian to Carboniferous 358.9 million years ago, which Romer had described and analyzed in detail. His conclusion was that it was not until the middle of the Lower Carboniferous that more and more fossils could be detected. Thus, the Faunenreduzierung could be a direct consequence of the preceding, with a large extinction connected slope mountain event be. Even if the gap has now largely been closed by recent finds, a longer regeneration phase is still considered likely.

The earlier assumption that a permanent oxygen shortage in the Lower Carboniferous would have prevented an increase in biodiversity is no longer shared in current specialist literature. Instead, it is pointed out that many of the vertebrates ( vertebrates ) of that time recorded a persistent decrease in body size. Ecological factors are cited as the reason for the global trend towards short stature. The factors associated with minimizing body size, such as high reproduction rates, faster generation changes and larger populations, are considered to be an evolutionary process of adaptation to changed environmental conditions.

Awards and honors

In 1937 Romer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1944 to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1951 to the American Philosophical Society .

In 1954 he was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and two years later he received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal of the Academy. In 1962 Romer received the Penrose Medal from the Geological Society of America . In 1959 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . In 1964 he became a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1969 he was elected a foreign member ("Foreign Member") of the Royal Society . The Romer-Simpson Medal was named in his honor , an award in the field of vertebrate paleontology of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology , of which he was an honorary member (1968).

Fonts

  • Vertebrate Paleontology . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1933.
  • Man and the Vertebrates . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1933.
  • The vertebrate body . WB Saunders, Philadelphia 1949.
  • Osteology of the Reptiles . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1956.
  • Notes and Comments on Vertebrate Paleontology . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1968.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sandra Isabella Kaiser, Markus Aretz, Ralph Thomas Becker: The global Hangenberg Crisis (Devonian – Carboniferous transition): review of a first-order mass extinction . (PDF) In: Geological Society, London, Special Publications . 423, August 2016, pp. 387-437.
  2. ↑ Benjamin KA Otoo, Jennifer A. Clack, Timothy R. Smithson, Carys E. Bennett, Timothy I. Kearsey, Michael I. Coates: A fish and tetrapod fauna from Romer's Gap preserved in Scottish Tournaisian floodplain deposits . In: Palaeontology . 62, No. 2, March 2019, pp. 225-253. doi : 10.1126 / science.aac7373 .
  3. ↑ Lauren Sallan, Andrew K. Galimberti: Body-size reduction in vertebrates following the end-Devonian mass extinction . In: Science . 350, No. 6262, November 2015, pp. 812-815. doi : 10.1126 / science.aac7373 .
  4. ^ Members of the American Academy. Listed by election year, 1900-1949 (PDF) . Retrieved September 27, 2015.
  5. ^ Member History: Alfred S. Romer. American Philosophical Society, accessed November 30, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Mary Clark Thompson Medal ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. National Academy of Sciences @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nasonline.org
  7. ↑ Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal ( Memento of the original from September 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. National Academy of Sciences @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nasonline.org
  8. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed April 3, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Prof. Dr. Alfred Sherwood Romer , members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
  10. ^ Romer-Simpson Medal. ( Memento July 15, 2010 on the Internet Archive ) Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
personal data
SURNAME Romer, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Romer, Alfred Sherwood
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH White Plains , New York
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 1973