tags: Jennifer A. Clack, 2008 Daniel Girault Elliot medal, National Academy of Sciences, zoology, evolutionary biology, paleontology
The National Academy of Sciences's 2008 Daniel Girault Elliot medal.
I just learned that Jennifer A. Clack, ScD, FLS, Professor and Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Acting Director of the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, UK, been awarded the 2008 Daniel Girault Elliot medal by the National Academy of Sciences.
The medal recognizes excellence in zoology or paleontology during a three to five year period of time, and the list of past recipients is very distinguished. Professor Clack is the first vertebrate paleontologist since Al Romer in 1956 to have been awarded this medal, only the second woman to have ever received it (the other was Libby Hyman in 1951), and the first British awardee since D'Arcy Thompson.
Professor Clack has done a lot of "traditional" work in this field, but she has also pioneered important phylogenetic, functional, and macroevolutionary studies that bear on how major evolutionary changes occur.
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I read the headline, looked at the image, and the unbidden thought came to my mind "she doesn't exactly look like a woman".
This is excellent stuff. I'm going to have to go find out more about Clack, now.