Neal Woodman

Neal Woodman (born July 8, 1958 in Doylestown , Pennsylvania ) is an American paleontologist and mammalogist . His research focus is on small mammals .

Life

Woodman grew up on the Delaware River in rural northern Bucks County . From 1976 he spent his student years at Earlham College , Richmond , Indiana , where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in geology in 1980 . As a student, he worked at the university's Joseph Moore Museum, where he reorganized the fossil, mineral and rock collections. He also collected fossils that he discovered on roadsides or on rocky outcrops. In the winter of 1976/77 he took part in a study of the bat population in southern Indiana. In the summer of 1978 he was involved in the excavation of the Overmyer mastodon in northern Indiana.

After completing his bachelor's degree, Woodman studied at the geological institute of the University of Iowa , which he completed in 1982 under the direction of Holmes Semken with a master's thesis on paleoecology in a Lower Pleistocene deposit in northeastern Iowa. This work documents the occurrence of a subarctic mammal fauna in this region during the late Ice Age, including collar lemmings , Alaskan voles and Arctic ground squirrels .

Upon graduation, Woodman did an internship at the Illinois State Museum . His first project, which was led by Bonnie Styles, was the determination of animal finds (mainly fish) from a fossil deposit of the Mississippian and the Modoc rock shelter in Illinois. He then worked with Russell W. Graham on the identification of paleontological remains from the False Cougar Cave in Montana .

In 1984 Woodman began studying at the University of Kansas , where he obtained a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Systematics and Ecology in 1986 . In preparation for his dissertation, he worked under the direction of Robert S. Hoffmann (1929-2010), curator at the mammal department of the Kansas University Museum of Natural History , as a curatorial assistant.

Woodman originally intended to write a doctoral thesis on the vertebrate fauna of the Sangamon Interglacial in Illinois. He became a Ph.D. -Candidate (ABD, All but dissertation) and spent a year on an official leave of absence from the university in Costa Rica , where he participated in a botanical and zoological expedition in the northern border region funded by the United States Agency for International Development . During Woodman's absence, Hoffmann moved to the Smithsonian Institution . His successor at the University of Kansas was Robert M. Timm , under whose direction Woodman received a Ph.D. received his doctorate. Finally, the topic of Woodman's dissertation was Biogeographical and Evolutionary Relationships Among Central American Small-Eared Shrews of the Genus Cryptotis (Mammalia: Insectivora: Soricidae) on the shrews of Costa Rica. In his post-doctoral phase, he took part in three expeditions to the lowland rainforests of Peru funded by the University of Kansas . From 1993 to 1995 he deepened his teaching skills at Longview Community College in Missouri and Johnson County Community College in Kansas. He completed three manuscripts on his fieldwork in Peru and published material from his dissertation.

From 1995 to 1997, Woodman was an assistant professor at Southwestern College in the southern Flint Hills of Kansas. During this time he spent the summer months in Costa Rica, where he supported field excursions for the Organization for Tropical Studies . It was at this college that he met his wife, Sandy Feinstein, a doctorate in medieval literature, who, at Woodman's instigation, accepted a position as coordinator at Pennsylvania State University in Spring Township , Pennsylvania . From 1997 to 2000 Woodman was a lecturer at East Stroudsburg University in the Poconos Region of Pennsylvania, where he led summer excursions to Costa Rica and Nicaragua .

In January 2001, Woodman became a zoologist and mammalian curator at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in the Biological Survey Unit of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. His research interests include the taxonomy, systematics, and anatomy of shrews . He described several new species of shrew from the genus Cryptotis , including Cryptotis hondurensis , Cryptotis tamensis , Cryptotis colombiana and bat species from the genera Lonchophylla and Hsunycteris , including Hsunycteris pattoni , Lonchisophylla cadenai and Hsunaiycter . Robert M. Timm was involved in some descriptions as co-descriptor.

In addition to his field work in Costa Rica and Peru, he went on expeditions to Ecuador , Guatemala , Mexico , Myanmar and Syria . He toured several regions in the United States, including Alaska.

Woodman published, among others, the studies Paleoecology of Subarctic Faunal Assemblages from the Woodfordian Age (Pleistocene: Wisconsinan) Elkader Site, Northeastern Iowa from 1996, Fossil Shrews from Honduras and Their Significance for Late Glacial Evolution in Body Size (Mammalia: Soricidae: Cryptotis ) from 2005 and The Overmyer Mastodon (Mammut americanum) from Fulton County, Indiana. from 2008. In 2018 he co-wrote the chapter on shrews in volume eight of the Handbook of the Mammals of the World .

Web links

• Biography of Neal Woodman on the Washington Biologist's Field Club website
• Smithsonian Institution Employee Profile