Bruce Runnegar

Bruce Norman Runnegar ( born February 2, 1941 in Brisbane ) is an Australian paleontologist.

Life

Runnegar studied ( Bachelor's degrees with first class honors 1964) and received his doctorate in 1967 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane ( periodontal ligament bivalves from the Permian of eastern Australia). He taught from 1968 as a Lecturer at the University of New England in Armidale (New South Wales), Professor of Geology ( from 1974 as an Associate Professor from 1985 as a professor with a personal Chair and in 1983 as Head of the Department of Geology and Geophysics ) and from 1987 at the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA). He is both a member of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA. In 1969 he was a visiting scholar at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution.

He is director of the Astrobiology Centre of the University of California, Los Angeles ( UCLA), and the NASA Astrobiology Center ( since 2003).

In 1978 he was awarded a D.Sc. the University of Queensland. He is a member of the Australian Academy of Science (1987 ) and received the Mawson Medal ( 1981). He is also a member of the Geological Society of America.

He conducted research on the early evolution of molluscs, and generally about the earliest evolution of animals (especially the Ediacaran fauna) and turned early, in the early 1980s, molecular clocks (eg, RNA - data) to the question whether the Cambrian explosion in biodiversity an artifact of the fossil record or is genuine.

Runnegar 1984/85 was 1984/85 President of the Association of Australasian Paleontologists. He is founding editor (1974 ) of the journal Alcheringa and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Awards

Writings

  • Genes, Sequences and Clocks: Molecular clues to the history of life, in Charles Richard Marshall, J. William Schopf (Editor ), Evolution and the molecular revolution, Jones and Bartlett 1996
  • Evolution of the earliest animals, J. William Schopf at (Editor) Major events in the history of life, Jones and Bartlett 1992
  • Mikhail A. Fedonkin Proterozoic Metazoan Body Fossils, in J. William Schopf, Cornelis Klein ( Editor) The proterozoic biosphere, Cambridge University Press 1992
  • YES Ferguson Stratigraphy of the Permian and Lower Triassic marine sediments of the Gympie District, Queensland, University of Queensland Press 1969
University of New England (Australia) Armidale, New South Wales Ediacara biota Lapworth Medal Paleontological Society Medal
149173
de