J. Wyatt Durham

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John Wyatt Durham (born August 22, 1907 in Okanogon , Washington , † May 15, 1996 in Kensington , California ) was an American paleontologist .

Life

Durham was the son of a farmer and shipbuilder on Puget Sound . He studied paleontology at the University of Washington with Charles Edwin Weaver and at the University of California at Berkeley with Bruce L. Clark . After completing his master’s degree in 1936, he became a paleontologist in oil exploration and worked in Java and Sumatra for a Dutch oil company ( Nederlandische Pacific Petroleum Mij ) until 1939 . According to his own statements, he also found the first Paleozoic fossils on Sumatra. In 1941 he received his doctorate in Berkeley with Clark, from 1943 to 1946 he worked for the Tropical Oil Company in Colombia (a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey). In 1946 he became Associate Professor of Paleontology at Caltech and in 1947 Associate Professor and Curator of Invertebrate Fossils in Berkeley at the Museum of Paleontology . In 1953 he became a professor there. In 1975 he retired, but remained scientifically active.

Durham initially dealt with classical paleontology of molluscs, corals and echinoderms of the Tertiary and Mesozoic Era and from the 1950s increasingly with global biostratigraphy. He also dealt with paleoentomology, especially of insects enclosed in amber, for example from Mexico, and most recently with very early invertebrates (especially early echinoderms) from the end of the Precambrian and early Cambrian. In 1963 he introduced the new class of Helicoplacoidea (some of the first echinoderms of the early Cambrian) with KE Caster . As a curator, he organized and expanded the collection of fossil invertebrates, particularly with regard to the systematic search and labeling of type specimens.

He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the California Academy of Sciences and was their President from 1966 to 1968. 1965/66 he was President of the Paleontological Society and from 1971 to 1976 editor of the Journal of Paleontology. In 1954/55 and 1965/66 he was a Guggenheim Fellow . In 1988 he received the Paleontological Society Medal.

Fonts

  • with RV Melville: A classification of echinoids. Journal of Paleontology, 31, 1958, pp. 73-197.
  • Evolution among the echinoidea , Cambridge Philosophical Society Biological Reviews, Volume 41, 1966, pp. 368-391.
  • The incompleteness of our knowledge of the fossil record , Journal of Paleontology, Volume 41, 1967, pp. 559-565.
  • The probable metazoan biota of the Precambrian as indicated by the subsequent record , Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Volume 16, 1978, pp. 21-42
  • Observations on the early Cambrian heliplacoid echinoderms. Journal of Paleontology, 67, 1993, pp. 590-604.

literature

  • Ralph Langenheim: Memorial to J. Wyatt Durham, 1907-1996. Geological Society of America Memorials, Volume 30, August 1999, PDF (45.2 kB; English)

References and comments

  1. ↑ Caster, Durham: helicoplacus, a new class of echinoderms. Science, Vol. 140, 1963, p. 820.
personal data
SURNAME Durham, J. Wyatt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Durham, John Wyatt (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Okanogon , Washington
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1996
Place of death Kensington , California