William A. Clemens, Jr.

William Alvin Clemens Jr. ( born May 15, 1932 Berkeley, California) is an American vertebrate paleontologist who since the 1950s, especially with the early development of mammals in the Mesozoic is concerned and it is a leading expert.

Clemens studied at the University of California, Berkeley, where in 1954 his master's degree in 1960 and made ​​his doctorate in paleontology. From 1961 he was at the University of Kansas, where he rose to Associate Professor and Associate Curator for fossils of higher vertebrates in the accompanying Museum of Natural History. In 1967 he became associate professor in 1971 and professor of paleontology at the University of Berkeley. In 1994 he was in the Department of Integrated Biology. 1987 to 1989 he was the Director of The Museum of Paleontology. In 2002, he retired. In 1982 he was Miller Institute Research Professor at Berkeley.

He dealt with the evolution of primitive mammals in the Mesozoic and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, he was a leading proponent for a gradual decline of the dinosaurs before the meteorite impact and pointed to a slight impairment of the mammal by the event. This led to heated debates with supporters of the meteorite disaster thesis by Walter Alvarez (who was at the same faculty at Berkeley ) until the 1990s. He has published monographs on early European mammals and the mammals of the Lance Formation of the Cretaceous in Wyoming. He also dealt with the microstructure of teeth earlier mammals ( mainly found from these fossils types).

In 1974 he was Guggenheim Fellow and 1978/79 Alexander von Humboldt U.S. Senior Scientist Fellow, where he conducted research in Munich (and later in the early 1990s on another sabbatical in Bonn). He received the Penrose Award of the Geological Society of America. In 2006 he was awarded the Romer -Simpson Medal the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which he was president from 1992 to 1994 and an honorary member in 2002, he was. He is an honorary member in and received their JT Gregory Award. He is a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, of which he was a trustee from 1988 to 1997 and Vice President and four years as President.

He is married to Dorothy Clemens since 1955 and has three daughters and a son.

Writings

• Editor Jason A. Lillegraven, Zofia Kielan - Jaworowska Mesozoic Mammals -the first two Thirds of mammalian history, University of California Press 1979
• Fossil mammals of the type Lance formation, Wyoming, University of California Press, 3 volumes, 1964
• Rhaeto - Liassic mammals from Switzerland and West Germany, Bavarian State Collection Munich 1980
• " Characterization of enamel microstructure and application of the origins of prismatic structures in systematic analyzes", microstructure in Wighart Koenigswald (eds) Tooth enamel. Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema 1997, pp. 85-112.
• "Patterns of mammalian evolution across the Cretaceous - Tertiary boundary". From the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, Zoological Series, Volume 77, 2001, pp. 175-191.
• " Evolution of the mammalian fauna across the Cretaceous - Tertiary boundary in northeastern Montana and other areas of the Western Interior. " Geological Society of America, Special Paper 361, 2002, pp. 217-245.