Alfred Sherwood Romer

Alfred Sherwood Romer was an American paleontologist born December 28, 1894, in White Plains, New York, who died November 5, 1973, at age 78, and who became an associate professor at the University of Chicago in 1923 before joining Harvard University as professor of biology in 1934 and directing its Museum of Comparative Zoology from 1946. A specialist in vertebrate evolution who synthesized paleontology, comparative anatomy, and embryology, he wrote the widely followed textbook Vertebrate Paleontology and identified the gap in the tetrapod fossil record between the Devonian and Carboniferous periods now known as Romer Gap. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, received the Mary Clark Thompson Medal in 1954, the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal in 1956, the Penrose Medal in 1962, the Linnean Medal in 1972, and the Wollaston Medal in 1973.