UA Evolution Lectureship Series Continues with Paleontologist Gingerich

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The last in a series of public lectures on evolution will continue at The University of Alabama with paleontologist Phillip Gingerich. He will speak on “Fossils and the Origin of Whales” April 19 at 7:30 p.m. in 127 Biology Building Auditorium on the UA campus.

Gingerich is a professor of geological sciences and curator of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan where he also holds faculty appointments in anthropology, ecology and evolutionary biology.

Gingerich taught science and mathematics for two years at Kongwe Secondary School in Malawi before beginning graduate studies. He was a NATO postdoctoral scholar at the Université de Montpellier in France, and he is an Alexander von Humboldt scholar affiliated with the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in Germany. He has been a member of the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration since 2006.

He has done crucial research on the phylogeny and origin of whales, including the discovery and description of the earliest known whale, Pakicetus, and the archaic whale, Rodhocetus, as well as work on the osteology of Dorudon and Basilosaurus. Gingerich has also carried out extensive research into faunal turnover rates in the Cenozoic era.

Gingerich has active long-term field projects in several parts of the world. His research with students and colleagues in Wyoming involves environments and evolution through the Paleocene-Eocene transition, when important groups of modern mammals appeared in the fossil record during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum global greenhouse warming event.

His research on Eocene whales and sea cows involves colleagues in Egypt, where fossil skeletons are abundant and often virtually complete. Gingerich’s Egyptian field area, Wadi Hitan, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Research with colleagues in Pakistan is focused on the origin of whales, and here Gingerich’s team was the first to find whales with skeletons linking them to artiodactyl land mammals.

The department of geological sciences is sponsoring Gingerich’s lecture.

The Alabama Lectures on Life’s Evolution, or ALLELE, series is funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation, and by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences and College of Education. The lectures are designed for a non-technical audience and are free and open to the public.