Jacques Gauthier

Jacques Armand Gauthier ( born 1948 ) is an American zoologist and vertebrate paleontologist. He is a founder of cladistics in paleontology.

Gauthier studied zoology at San Diego State University with a bachelor's degree in 1973 and a master's degree in 1980 (using the nomenclature of Sneak -like ) and in 1984 received his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, in paleontology (A cladistic analysis of the higher systematic categories of the Diapsida ). In his dissertation he undertook a cladistic analysis of Diapsiden. He is a professor of geology and evolutionary biology at Yale University and the Peabody Museum of Natural History as a curator of zoology and palaeontology of vertebrates.

In 1986, he introduced the Ornithodira, argued for the monophyly of the dinosaurs and the origin of birds from theropod .. That was also the beginning of a new system of cladistic classification of dinosaurs and reptiles. Further work related to the cladistic classification of amniotes, Squamata and Lepidosauria.

Writings

• Editor with L. F. Gall: New Perspectives on the Origin and Early Evolution of Birds: Proceeding of the International Symposium in Honor of John H. Ostrom; New Haven in 1999, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Special Publications 2001
• With T. Rowe Ceratosauria, in Weishampel, Dodson, Osmolka The Dinosaurs, University of California Press 1990
• With M. Donoghue, J. Doyle, A. Kluge, T. Rowe The importance of fossils in phylogeny reconstruction, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 20, 1989, S.431 - 460.
• With K. de Queiroz Phylogeny as a central principle in taxonomy: Phylogenetic definitions of taxon names, Systematic Zoology 39, 1990, pp. 307-322