Mary Dawson (paleontologist)
Mary Ruth Dawson ( born February 27, 1931 in Highland Park, Michigan) is an American vertebrate paleontologist -.
Life
Dawson studied at Michigan State University (Bachelor 1952) and in 1957 received his doctorate at the University of Kansas in zoology. Then she was there Instructor of Zoology and from 1958 Instructor and later Assistant Professor at Smith College. In 1961, she was Assistant Program Director at the National Science Foundation and 1962/63, she did research at the University of Pittsburgh. 1963 she became assistant curator and in 1971 curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and from 1970 Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Geosciences, who presided for a long time. 1982/83 they had in the meantime the post of Director ( Acting Director ) of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History held. From 2002 she was Curator Emeritus.
She specializes in early mammals (evolution of rodents, hares, rabbits). In the 1970s and 1980s, she discovered with colleagues in the Arctic ( Ellesmere Iceland at 78 degrees north latitude at the Strathcona Fjord in rocks from the Eureka Sound Formation) in mammalian and reptilian fossils of the early Tertiary ( Eocene 55 million years ago ) the first evidence of a migration of animals over a land bridge in the north of Asia to America. First fossils of vertebrates found Dawson with her colleague Robert (Mac ) West from Milwaukee Public Museum in 1975 on Ellesmere Iceland and until 1979, she led three more expeditions (a total of 11, she participated in expeditions to Arctic islands until 2002, in part ). There was that time in the Eocene there a much warmer climate (average temperatures 10 to 12 degrees, instead of the current 20 degrees ) with marsh landscapes that were inhabited by large water turtles and alligators, as well as, for example, primates, tapirs and Brontotherien. In particular, the Tapir finds ( Thuliadanta ) - the northernmost findings of tapirs ever- showed similarities to both finds from the same time in Asia and North America. These findings were the beginning of an ongoing exploration of the Arctic increased by vertebrate paleontologists and were also further support the theory of plate tectonics, which began to prevail until the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In 2006, she discovered that the newly discovered Laotian rock rat, a "living fossil" is.
1952/53, she was a Fulbright scholar. In 1981 she was awarded the Arnold Guyot Award from the National Geographic Society. 2002 she was awarded the Romer -Simpson Medal the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which she was president in 1973/74 and whose glory it is a member since 1999. She is a member of the Paleontological Society, the Paleontological Society, Fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America and the Geological Society of America. She is an honorary Doctor ( L.H.D ) of Chatham College.
Private keeps and breeds Saint Bernard and she is in senior positions in various Saint Bernard clubs.
Writings
- Issuer with K. Christopher Beard Dawn of the age of mammals in Asia, Carnegie Museum of Natural History 1988
- Publisher Hugh H. Genoways Contributions in Quaternary vertebrate paleontology: a volume in memorial to John E. Guilday, Carnegie Museum of Natural History 1984
- Paleontologist Jason A. Lillegraven (Editor) Fanfare to at uncommon. Papers in Honor of Malcolm C. McKenna, 2004
- Oreolagus and other Lagomorpha ( Mammalia) from the Miocene of Colorado, Wyoming, and Oregon, Boulder, University of Colorado Press, 1965
- Editor Craig C. Black Contributions in Quaternary vertebrate paleontology: a volume in memorial to John E. Guilday, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles 1989