John A. Wilson

John Andrew Wilson , called Jack Wilson, (born November 3, 1914 in Lawrence , Massachusetts , † October 21, 2008 ) was an American vertebrate paleontologist and geologist .

Wilson studied geology and paleontology at the University of Michigan , where he received his bachelor's degree in 1937 and his PhD in 1941 under E. C. Case . He then taught at the Idaho School of Mines . During World War II he did his military service on the aircraft carrier USS Hancock in the Pacific. After the war he was a professor of geology at the University of Texas at Austin . There he worked as a vertebrate palaeontologist first of all the extensive collections of early terrestrial vertebrates of the Permian and Triassic and later that of mammals from the Middle Tertiary from the Gulf Coast region and he created a biostratigraphy of the Miocene in this region. He was also one of the first vertebrate paleontologists to explore the Paleocene , Eocene, and Miocene fossil sites in Big Bend National Park in Texas . He is the founder of the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin . In 1969 he was visiting professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México .

In 1964 he found and first described an early primate (Eocene, 55 million years old, Texas) Rooneyia viejaensis , in which the cranial spout was preserved.

In 2000 he received the Romer-Simpson Medal of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology , of which he was president in 1952 and of which he was an honorary member since 1986. He was a member of the Texas Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science . He received the Society of Sedimentary Geology's Best Paper Award in 1957 and was a Distinguished Lecturer of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 1960/61.

He was married twice and had three sons.

Web links

• Obituary at the University of Texas

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The omomyidae duly
2. ↑ site to Rooneyia at the University of Texas