Farish Jenkins

Farish Alston Jenkins Jr. ( born May 19, 1940 in New York City; † November 11, 2012 in Boston ) was an American vertebrate paleontologist.

Jenkins studied at Princeton University (Bachelor 1961) and, interrupted by nearly four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he attained the rank of captain, Yale University (Master 's degree in 1966 ). At Yale University, he obtained his doctorate in geology in 1968. He also had a master's degree from Harvard University (1974). From 1968 he was instructor and then assistant professor of anatomy at Columbia University Medical School, and from 1971 Associate Professor of Biology and Associate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Harvard -MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and Harvard Medical School. Since 1974 he was curator of vertebrate paleontology and biology professor and since 1989, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He was also a professor of anatomy at the Harvard -MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

In 1994 he discovered in northwestern Greenland jawbone of Haramiyida, early mammals from the Late Triassic of which were known otherwise only teeth. With Ted Daeschler and Neil Shubin it was first described (2006) and Finder of Tiktaalik, a fossil fish and amphibian characteristics of the upper Devonian of Ellesmere Iceland. He also dealt with the biomechanics of the musculoskeletal apparatus.