Bruce Runnegar
Bruce Norman Runnegar (born February 2, 1941 in Brisbane ) is an Australian paleontologist .
Life
Runnegar studied (bachelor's degrees with first class honors in 1964) and received his doctorate in 1967 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane (Desmodont bivalves from the Permian of eastern Australia). He taught from 1968 as a lecturer at the University of New England in Armidale ( New South Wales ), as professor of geology (from 1974 as associate professor, from 1985 as professor with a personal chair and from 1983 as head of the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics) and from 1987 at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is a member of both the Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA. In 1969 he was a visiting scholar at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History .
He is director of the Astrobiology Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the NASA Astrobiology Center (since 2003).
In 1978 he received a D.Sc. from the University of Queensland. He is a member of the Australian Academy of Sciences (1987) and received its Mawson Medal (1981). He is also a member of the Geological Society of America.
He researched the early evolution of molluscs and, in general, the earliest evolution of animals (especially the Ediacaran fauna ) and applied molecular clocks ( e.g. RNA data) to the question of whether the Cambrian Explosion occurred early in the early 1980s in the biodiversity is an artifact of the fossil tradition or is genuine.
In 1972 he and colleagues introduced the extinct mollusc class of beaked shawls .
Runnegar 1984/85 was President of the Association of Australasian Paleontologists in 1984/85. He is Founding Editor (1974) of Alcheringa magazine and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .
Awards
- In 1981 he received the Mawson Medal from the Australian Academy of Sciences.
- In 2009 he received the Lapworth Medal .
- In 2010 he received the Paleontological Society Medal .
Fonts
- Genes, Sequences and Clocks: Molecular clues to the history of life, in Charles Richard Marshall, J. William Schopf (Editor) Evolution and the molecular revolution , Jones and Bartlett 1996
- Evolution of the earliest animals, in J. William Schopf (Editor) Major events in the history of life , Jones and Bartlett 1992
- with Mikhail A. Fedonkin Proterozoic Metazoan Body Fossils , in J. William Schopf, Cornelis Klein (editors) The proterozoic biosphere , Cambridge University Press 1992
- with JA Ferguson Stratigraphy of the Permian and Lower Triassic marine sediments of the Gympie District, Queensland , University of Queensland Press 1969
Web links
- Website at UCLA ( Memento from June 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- Website at the NASA Astrobiology Institute
- Acknowledged at the Lapworth Medal, Palaeontological Association and the Astrobiology Network
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Runnegar, Bruce |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Runnegar, Bruce Norman (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Australian paleontologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 2, 1941 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Brisbane |