Office:
1514 Ruthven Museums Building, 1109 Geddes Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan Mail: Museum of Paleontology, The University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, MI 48109-1079 Tel.: 734-764-0490 Fax: 734-936-1380
E-mail: gingeric@umich.edu
Mammals have an unusually dense and continuous fossil record, and are thus
ideal for evolutionary studies. I am interested in understanding how evolution
as a process acting on generation-to-generation scales of time yields the microevolutionary
and macroevolutionary patterns we observe on longer historical and geological
scales of time. Study of the evolutionary process
and comparison of resulting patterns requires quantification of evolutionary change and comparison in terms
of rate.
Field work with students in Wyoming is focused on bed-by-bed
collecting of Paleocene and early Eocene vertebrates to provide detailed
species-level evolutionary time series for quantification of evolutionary
rates, and, simultaneously, a high-resolution stratigraphic record of
the appearance of modern orders of mammals at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary
(Perissodactyla, Primates, etc.). Our work has shown the appearance of several important
modern orders to be synchronous and to coincide with an abrupt dwarfing event in mammals. In recent years we have been able to link the first appearances and dwarfing to a brief but important worldwide shift of carbon
and oxygen isotopes and a rapid but short-lived event of global climate
warming— the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or PETM. In this instance, profound long-term higher-taxonomic faunal
change resulted from a transient environmental perturbation affecting
species over a broad geographic area.
Search for the origin of modern orders of mammals led
to field work in the Paleocene and Eocene of South Asia, starting in the
1970s, which has yielded important new land-mammal faunas in Pakistan.
Early whales (e.g., Pakicetus) were discovered there unexpectedly,
which has diverted attention to middle and upper Eocene marine strata
in Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, and Tunisia. Field work in these Tethyan sediments
has yielded important intermediate forms documenting the origin and early
evolution of whales.
I remain interested in the origin of primates, the Eocene evolution of primates, and the origin of higher primates or Anthropoidea.
TEACHING
I teach an introductory minicourse on primate evolution
(Geological Sciences 106) during the Fall or Winter terms, and a more advanced
course on primate evolution (GS 438) or mammalian evolution (GS 439) during
alternate Winter terms. In each, the primate and mammal fossil records
provide an empirical basis for consideration of broader issues in the
study of earth history and evolution. I also co-teach to a new Analytical Paleontology course (GS 510) in alternate years, and contribute regularly to our
Friday noon Museum of Paleontology seminar on paleobiology and evolution
(Fall and Winter terms: GS 536). Finally, supervision of undergraduate and graduate
student research on mammals and evolution is an ongoing extension of classroom teaching.
