Philip D. Gingerich

Dean Philip Gingerich ( born March 23, 1946 in Goshen ( Indiana)) is an American vertebrate paleontologist.

Gingerich studied at Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in 1968 and from Yale University with a master's degree in 1972 and his doctorate in paleontology in 1974. Afterwards, he was Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, where he in 1979 Associate Professor and in 1983 Professor been. From 1974 he was also Assistant Curator and later curator at the Paleontological Museum of the University, whose director he was from 1981 to 1987 and 1989 to 2011.

He is particularly concerned with the origin and evolution of early primates and whales and the Paleocene - Eocene period, including the Paleocene / Eocene Thermal Maximum ( PETM ). After Gingerich this relatively short warm period fell (with increased level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) with the formation of important new mammal groups (such as Perissodactyla, Artiodactyla, Primates ) and was characterized by an accelerated speciation and partly by the formation of dwarf forms. He is also on quantitative approaches to Paleobiology and Evolution interested ( rate of evolution, evolutionary time scale).

Gingerich found with colleagues already in the 1970s fossils of progenitors of the whales in Pakistan ( Pakicetus ) and it was followed by further discoveries of early whales in layers of the former Tethys Sea from the Eocene of Pakistan and the Middle East (Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia). In 2000 he took first fossils of the predecessor of the whales Rodhocetus from the Eocene in Baluchistan. In primates, he examined, among others, Wighart Koenigswald and other Darwinius from the Messel pit and an early primates from the group of Adapiformes from the Eocene of North America ( Cantius Torresi from Wyoming, 1986) and southern France (1975). He also found the earliest references to a representative of another early primate group in North America, Teilhardina from the family of Omomyidae 2006, he was with colleagues hints to the fact that Teilhardina very quickly spread both to Europe and to North America in the PETM of Asia.

In 2012 he was awarded the Romer -Simpson Medal, in 1980 the Henry Russell Award from the University of Michigan, 2005, André Dumont Medal of the Belgian Geological Society and the 1981 Charles Schuchert Award. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 2005/ 06 he was a Humboldt Research Award at the University of Bonn. In 2010 he became a corresponding member of the Palaeontological Society of honor. 2010 to 2012 he was president of the Paleontological Society, which he is a Fellow since 2005.

Writings

  • Evolutionary patterns in early Cenozoic mammals. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 8, 1980, 407-424.
  • Environment and evolution through the Paleocene - Eocene thermal maximum, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 21, 2006, 246-253
  • Cetacea in KD Rose, JD Archibald (eds.): Placental mammals: origin, timing, and relationships of the major extant clades, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2005, pp. 234-252
  • Evolution of whales from country to sea, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 156, 2012, pp. 309-323
  • With Wighart Koenigswald: Whales in the desert: Fossil report to the path of whales from land to water, in N. Elsner, H.-J. Fritz, R. Gradstein, J. Reidtner (Editor) evolution: chance and inevitability of creation, Wallenstein Verlag, Göttingen, 2009, pp. 341-361
  • Rates of evolution, Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 40, 2009 657-675
  • Evolution of prosimians. In JS Jones, RD Martin, DR Pilbeam (eds.): Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, p 201
Romer-Simpson Medal Humboldt Prize Integrated Authority File
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