Kevin Padian

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Kevin Padian (* 12. March 1951 in Morristown , New Jersey ) is an American vertebrate - paleontologist .

He graduated from Colgate University with a bachelor's degree in 1972 and a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) in 1974. He initially wanted to become a teacher and also taught. He later went to Yale University , where he received his Masters degree (MPhil) in paleontology in 1978 and a PhD in biology in 1980. His dissertation was titled Paleobiology of lower vertebrates . Since 1980 he has been a curator at the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley , where he became Professor of Integrative Biology.

He dealt with the emergence of main lines of evolutionary development such as that of flight in dinosaurs , which are close to the origin of birds, with pterosaurs , changes in the land vertebrate fauna on the border between Triassic and Jurassic (origin of dinosaurs), the interpretation of the footprints of dinosaurs (with Inferences about their mode of locomotion), microstructure of dinosaur bones (with conclusions about function, growth, age, diet, etc.).

He is active in initiatives to curb private (often professionally operated) fossil searches in the USA.

In 2007 he became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . Padian was interviewed for the documentary Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial .

Fonts

  • as editor: The Origin of Birds and the Evolution of Flight , California Academy of Science 1986
  • as editor: The Beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs: Faunal Change Across the Triassic-Jurassic Boundary , Cambridge University Press 1986
  • Editor with Philip J. Currie : Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs , Academic Press 1997
  • Editor with Ellen-Therese Lamm: Bone Histology of Fossil Tetrapods: Advancing Methods, Analysis, and Interpretation , University of California Press 2013
  • Dinosaur Physiology (with John Horner ), Basal Avialae , in Weishampel, Osmolska, Dodson The Dinosauria , University of California Press, 2nd edition 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ^ K Padian: Palaeontology: Dividing the dinosaurs . In: Nature . 543, 2017, pp. 494-495. PMID 28332523 .
  3. ↑ For example, he was involved in late Triassic excavations at the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico that showed the coexistence of the dinosaur precursors and the dinosaurs themselves. Berkeley News 2007 . RB Irmis, SJ Nesbitt, K Padian, ND Smith, AH Turner, D Woody, A Downs: A Late Triassic dinosauromorph assemblage from New Mexico and the rise of dinosaurs , Science, Volume 317, 2007, pp 358-361
personal data
SURNAME Padian, Kevin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Morristown , New Jersey