Mary R. Dawson

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Mary R. Dawson, 2011

Mary Ruth Dawson (born February 27, 1931 in Highland Park , Michigan ) is an American vertebrate paleontologist.

Life

Dawson studied at Michigan State University (Bachelor in 1952) and received his PhD in Zoology from the University of Kansas in 1957 . Then she was there instructor for zoology and from 1958 instructor and later assistant professor at Smith College. From 1961 she was Assistant Program Director at the National Science Foundation and from 1962/63 she conducted research at the University of Pittsburgh . In 1963 she became Assistant Curator and from 1971 curator for vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and from 1970 Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Geosciences, which she also headed for a long time. In 1982/83 she held the post of Acting Director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. From 2002 she was a curator emeritus .

She specializes in early mammals (evolution of rodents, hares, rabbits). In the 1970s and 1980s, she and colleagues in the Arctic ( Ellesmere Island at 78 degrees north latitude on Strathcona Fjord in rocks of the Eureka Sound Formation ) discovered first evidence of one in mammal and reptile fossils from the early Tertiary ( Eocene 55 million years ago) Migration of animals over a land bridge in the north of Asia to America. Dawson found the first fossils of vertebrates with her colleague Robert (Mac) West from the Milwaukee Public Museum on Ellesmere Island in 1975 and led three further expeditions by 1979 (in total she took part in 11 expeditions to Arctic islands until 2002). Back in the Eocene, the climate there was much warmer (mean temperatures 10 to 12 degrees, instead of today's −20 degrees) with swampy landscapes inhabited by large turtles and alligators as well as primates, tapirs and brontotheria . In particular the tapir finds ( Thuliadanta ) - the northernmost finds of tapirs at all - showed similarities to finds from the same period in Asia and North America. These discoveries were the beginning of an intensified exploration of the Arctic by vertebrate paleontologists, which continues to this day, and were also a further pillar of the theory of plate tectonics , which only began to gain acceptance from the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 2006 she discovered that the newly discovered Laotian rock rat is a "living fossil".

In 1952/53 she was a Fulbright scholar. In 1981 she received the Arnold Guyot Award from the National Geographic Society . In 2002 she received the Romer Simpson Medal of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology , of which she was president in 1973/74 and of which she has been an honorary member since 1999. She is a member of the Paleontological Society , the Paleontological Society , Fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America, and the Geological Society of America . She is an Honorary Doctor (LHD) from Chatham College.

In her private life, she keeps and breeds St. Bernard dogs and holds leading positions in various St. Bernard associations.

Fonts

  • Editor with K. Christopher Beard Dawn of the age of mammals in Asia , Carnegie Museum of Natural History 1988
  • Editor with Hugh H. Genoways Contributions in Quaternary vertebrate paleontology: a volume in memorial to John E. Guilday , Carnegie Museum of Natural History 1984
  • with Jason A. Lillegraven (Editor) Fanfare to an uncommon paleontologist. Papers in Honor of Malcolm C. McKenna , 2004
  • Oreolagus and other Lagomorpha (Mammalia) from the Miocene of Colorado, Wyoming, and Oregon , Boulder, University of Colorado Press 1965
  • Editor with Craig C. Black Contributions in Quaternary vertebrate paleontology: a volume in memorial to John E. Guilday , Natural History Museum of Los Angeles 1989

literature

  • K. Christopher Beard, Zhe-Xi Luo (Editor) Mammalian paleontology on a global stage: papers in honor of Mary R. Dawson , Carnegie Museum of Natural History 2007

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life and career data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ Ellesmere Island Eocene Fossils ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved August 21, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Dawson, Mary R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dawson, Mary Ruth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American vertebrate paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Highland Park , Michigan