Philip D. Gingerich

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Philip Dean Gingerich (born March 23, 1946 in Goshen (Indiana) ) is an American vertebrate paleontologist .

Gingerich studied at Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in 1968 and at Yale University with a master's degree in 1972 and a doctorate in paleontology in 1974. He was then an assistant professor at the University of Michigan , where he was an associate professor in 1979 and professor in 1983 has been. From 1974 he was also assistant curator and later curator at the University's Paleontological Museum, of which he was director from 1981 to 1987 and 1989 to 2011.

He is particularly concerned with the origin and evolution of the early primates and whales and the period Paleocene - Eocene including the Paleocene / Eocene Temperature Maximum (PETM). According to Gingerich, this relatively short warm phase (with an increased proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) coincided with the formation of important new groups of mammals (such as odd ungulates, even ungulates, primates) and was characterized by accelerated speciation and partly by the development of dwarf forms. He is also interested in quantitative approaches to paleobiology and evolution (rate of evolution, evolutionary timescale).

Gingerich and colleagues found fossils of ancestral whales in Pakistan ( Pakicetus ) as early as the 1970s, and further discoveries of early whales in layers of the former Tethys Sea from the Eocene in Pakistan and in the Middle East (Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia) followed. In 2000 he found the first fossils of the predecessor of the whale Rodhocetus from the Eocene in Baluchistan . Among other things, he investigated primates with Wighart von Koenigswald and other Darwinius from the Messel Pit and an early primate from the Adapiformes group from the Eocene of North America ( Cantius torresi from Wyoming, 1986) and southern France (1975). He also found the earliest evidence of a representative of another early primate group in North America, Teilhardina from the family of Omomyidae In 2006, he and colleagues found evidence that Teilhardina spread very quickly in the PETM from Asia to both Europe and North America.

In 2012 he received the Romer Simpson Medal , in 1980 the Henry Russell Award from the University of Michigan, in 2005 the André Dumont Medal from the Belgian Geological Society and in 1981 the Charles Schuchert Award . He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , the American Philosophical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science . In 2005/06 he was awarded a Humboldt Research Prize at the University of Bonn . In 2010 he became a corresponding honorary member of the Paleontological Society . From 2010 to 2012 he was President of the Paleontological Society , of which he has been a Fellow since 2005.

Fonts

  • Evolutionary patterns in early Cenozoic mammals . Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 8, 1980, 407-424.
  • Environment and evolution through the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum , Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 21, 2006, 246-253
  • Cetacea in KD Rose, JD Archibald (Ed.): Placental mammals: origin, timing, and relationships of the major extant clades , Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2005, pp. 234-252
  • Evolution of whales from land to sea , Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 156, 2012, pp. 309-323
  • with Wighart von Koenigswald: Whales in the desert: Fossil report on the path of whales from land to water , in N. Elsner, H.-J. Fritz, R. Gradstein, J. Reidtner (editor) Evolution: Chance and Inevitability of Creation , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen, 2009, pp. 341–361
  • Rates of evolution , Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 40, 2009, 657-675
  • Evolution of prosimians . In JS Jones, RD Martin, DR Pilbeam (Eds.): Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, p. 201

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ^ Gingerich Mammalian response to climate change at the paleocene-eocene boundary: Polecat Bench Record in the northern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming , Geological Society of America Special Paper 369, 2003
  3. ^ Gingerich Early Eocene Cantius torresi — oldest primate of modern aspect from North America , Nature, Volume 319, 1986, 319-321
  4. ^ Gingerich Early Eocene Teilhardina brandti: oldest omomyid primate from North America , Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology, University of Michigan, 28, 1993, pp. 321-326
  5. ↑ Gingerich, Kenneth D. Rose, Thierry Smith Rapid Asia-Europa-North America geographical dispersal of earliest Eocene primate Teilhardina during the PETM , Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. 103, 2006, pp. 11223-11227
  6. ^ Book of Members. Retrieved July 26, 2016 .


personal data
SURNAME Gingerich, Philip D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gingerich, Philip Derstine (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Goshen (Indiana)