Michael Archer

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Michael "Mike" Archer AM (born March 25, 1945 in Sydney , New South Wales ) is an Australian paleontologist who is best known for his discoveries of mammalian fossils in the Riversleigh Formation and in other fossil deposits .

Life

Archer was born in Sydney and raised in the United States. After studying biology and geology at Princeton University in New Jersey, he graduated in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts. In 1976 he received his PhD from the University of Western Australia . From 1967 to 1968 he received a Fulbright Fellowship for his paleontological research at the Western Australian Museum in Perth. From 1968 to 1971 he did research at the Australian Research Council . From 1972 to 1978 he was the curator of the Mammals Department at the Queensland Museum . From 1978 to 1980 he was a lecturer at the School of Biological Science at the University of New South Wales. From 1985 to 1989 he was an associate professor and in 1989 he was appointed professor at the University of New South Wales . From 1999 to 2004 he was director of the Australian Museum . In 2002, Archer made headlines with the announcement that it would clone the extinct thylacine from the DNA of an embryo soaked in alcohol . However, this project proved to be a failure and was therefore discontinued in 2005. In 1986 he founded the Riversleigh Society, whose efforts made the Riversleigh Formation a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 .

Archer is a staunch critic of creationism .

Archer's discoveries and first scientific descriptions include the fossil genera Obdurodon , Australonycteris , Steropodon , Namilamadet and Yalkaparidon .

In 1987 he discovered the tooth of a mammal from the Eocene (around 55 million years old) at the Murgon site in southeast Queensland (270 km northwest of Brisbane ), which he assigned to placenta instead of marsupials and named Tingamarra porterorum and classified it among the ungulates . This was surprising, as it was assumed that the first placenta animals did not appear in Australia until much later, and that was one reason why marsupials formed the dominant mammalian fauna in Australia in contrast to other continents. Since the identification was based on only one tooth, this has also been criticized. There were also primitive marsupials and the oldest fossil bat find in Australia (and one of the oldest fossil bat finds ever), Australonycteris clarkae .

Awards

Works (selection)

  • 1982: Mammals in Australia Australian Museum, Sydney.
  • 1982: Carnivorous Marsupials , Volume 2. Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. ISBN 978-0-9599951-3-8
  • 1984: Vertebrate Zoogeography & Evolution in Australasia: Animals in Space & Time . Hesperian Press. ISBN 978-0-85905-036-4
  • 1985: The Kangaroo . (with Tim Flannery and Gordon Grigg) Weldon Press ISBN 978-0-949708-22-9
  • 1986: Uncovering Australia's Dreamtime (with Suzanne Hand). Surrey Beatty & Sons
  • 1987: Possums and Opossums: Studies in Evolution , Volume 1. Surrey Beatty & Sons in association with the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales.
  • 1987: Koala: Australia's Endearing Marsupial Reed Books Pty, Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7301-0158-1 (with Leonard Cronin)
  • 2002: Prehistoric mammals of Australia and New Guinea: One hundred million years of evolution . UNSW Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-86840-435-6 (with John A. Long)
  • 2002: Australia's lost world: Prehistoric animals of Riversleigh. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-33914-0 (with Suzanne Hand)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Henk Godthelp, Michael Archer, Richard Cifelli, Suzanne F. Hand, Coral Gilkeson: Earliest known Australian Tertiary mammal fauna, Nature, Volume 356, 1992, pp. 514-516, abstract
  2. ^ MO Woodburne, JA Case: Dispersal, Vicariance, and the Late Cretaceous to Early Tertiary Land Mammal Biogeography from South America to Australia, Journal of Mammalian Evolution, Volume 3, 1996, pp. 121-161.
  3. ↑ Suzanne Hand, Michael Novacek, Henk Godthelp, Michael Archer: First Eocene Bat from Australia , Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Volume 14, 1994, pp. 375-381
  4. ↑ Australia Day 2008 Honors List (PDF; 201 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Archer, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Archer, Mike (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Sydney , New South Wales