Joseph Tracy Gregory

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Tracy Gregory (born July 28, 1914 in Eureka (California) , † November 18, 2007 ) was an American paleontologist .

Gregory went to school in Berkeley and studied at the University of California, Berkeley , with a bachelor's degree in 1935 and a doctorate in paleontology in 1938 (with Ruben Stirton ). His teachers included Charles Camp and Ralph Chaney . As a post-doctoral student , he was at the American Museum of Natural History in 1938/39 (teaching part-time zoology at Columbia University) and then at the Laboratory of Economic Geology in Austin (as part of the WPA job creation program after the Great Depression). In 1941 he became an instructor in geology at the University of Michigan and a curator at its Paleontological Museum (successor to EC Case ). From 1942 to 1946 he did military service as a meteorologist. In 1946 he became assistant professor and then associate professor at Yale University and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History . In 1960 he moved to Berkeley as professor and curator for lower vertebrates at the University of California Museum of Paleontology . 1960 to 1965 and 1970 to 1974 he headed the Faculty of Paleontology and 1970 to 1974 he was director of the museum. In 1979 he retired, but remained scientifically active.

He dealt with fossil vertebrates among other things from the Carboniferous of Mazon Creek near Morris (Illinois) , Microsauria from the Permian and especially vertebrates of the late Triassic in the American southwest (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah), which he also for the Took advantage of biochronology . He first described Trilophosaurus , which earned him his professorship at the University of Michigan. He published on Aetosauria ( Typothorax ) and published a revision of the Phytosauria in 1962 . Gregory also published on Cenozoic mammals , e.g. B. for his PhD thesis on Pliocene Mammals in Big Springs Canyon, South Dakota.

From 1969 to 1989 he published the Bibliography of Fossil Vertebrates annually for the American Geological Institute and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. He also delved into the history of science and wrote biographies for the Dictionary of Scientific Biography .

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology , of which he was an honorary member since 1980, has presented the Joseph T. Gregory Award since 1992.

literature

  • Spencer G. Lucas , AP Hunt: Dedication to Joseph Gregory, in SG Lucas, AP Hunt (Ed.). Dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs in the American Southwest. New Mexico Museum of Natural History, Albuquerque, NM 1989

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The genera of phytosaurs, American Journal of Science, 260, 1962, 652-690
  2. ↑ Evolution and intercontinental relations of the Phytosauria (reptiles), Paläontolog. Journal, 43, 1969, 37-51
personal data
SURNAME Gregory, Joseph Tracy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Eureka (California)
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 2007