Jennifer Clack

Jennifer " Jenny " Alice Clack ( born 1937 ) is a British vertebrate paleontologist -. She is an expert on early land vertebrates (transition from fish to tetrapods ), as well as curator and professor at the Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge.

Life and work

Clack studied at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne with a bachelor 's degree in zoology in 1970. Afterwards, she turned to a career in museums, earned a degree at Leicester University and worked in the Birmingham City Museum, before turning back to paleontology. They began in 1978 a dissertation on Pholiderpeton ( a reptiliomorphen amphibian from the Carboniferous ) at the University of Newcastle in Alec Panchen and has his doctorate in 1984. They discovered stapes hearing bone, which led to the discovery of the stapes in early tetrapods Greererpeton to new insights into the development of early tetrapods hearing. In 1981, she was Assistant Curator at the Museum of Zoology in Cambridge. She has a Master of Arts and D. Sc. the University of Cambridge. In 2006 she became a professor of vertebrate paleontology at Cambridge.

In 1987, describing it a fairly complete fossil (called by her Boris ) of Acanthostega gunnari (previously known only in fragments ) from the upper Devonian of Greenland. The examination of this specimen and other early tetrapods led to new insights into the transition from water to land. The investigation of Boris showed that this a fishy tail, eight fingers - and had gills, and that his limbs were unable to support its weight on land ( instead of the usual five also a big surprise ). The studies clearly showed that the quadrupedalism was formed already in the water and locomotion by paddle movements served, in contrast to all previous notions that this was designed for the shore. As a result, many previously classified as fish fossils were re-examined in museum archives and discovered new tetrapods. Clack was later given the opportunity to examine the found by Erik Jarvik in Greenland Ichthyostega copy new, and also showed that limbs were not suitable for the shore. She found another Acanthostega skeletons and searched for fossils in Scotland from the centromere gap ( Romer Gap ) end of the Devonian, a fossil gap that just covered the transition of vertebrates on land from the sea. As it emerged, the full training of Tetrapodenmerkmalen drew more than 30 million years by the end of the Devonian to middle Carboniferous back.

She described first time in 1998 Eucritta from the Scottish Carboniferous. In 2002, she identified the 1971 found in Scotland ( and then classified as fish) Pederpes as tetrapods.

She is since 2009 a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2008 she received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences of the USA as well as the T. Neville George Medal of the Geological Society of Glasgow. She is an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

She is portrayed in the film Beautiful Minds for BBC4.

Writings

  • Gaining Ground: The Origin and Early Evolution of Tetrapods, Indiana University Press, 2002, 2nd edition 2012
  • Published by Marcelo R. Sánchez- Villagra with: Fossils of the Miocene Castillo Formation, Venezuela: Contributions in Neotropical Palaeontology, London, Palaeontological Association, Wiley -Blackwell 2004
  • Published by M. Ruta, AC Milner Patterns and processes in early vertebrate evolution, Special Papers in Palaeontology 81, 2009, 1-173.
  • Henning Blom, Per Erik Ahlberg Localities, distribution and Stratigraphical context of the Late Devonian tetrapods of East Greenland ( Meddelelser om Grønland ), Danish Polar Center 2005
  • Getting a leg up on land, Scientific American, November 2005
  • The fish - tetrapod transition: new fossils and interpretations, Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2, 2009, 213-223
  • The emergence of early tetrapods, palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatoogy, Palaeoecology, 232, 2006, 167-189
  • The fin to limb transition: new data, intepretations, and hypotheses from paleontology and developmental biology, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 37, 2009 163-179
  • With TR Smithson, SP Wood, JEA Marshall Earliest Carboniferous tetrapod faunas from Scotland and arthropod populate Romer 's Gap, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 2009, 4532-4537
Tetrapod (structure) Reptiliomorpha Alfred Romer Angela Milner Integrated Authority File
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