Robert L. Carroll

Biography

Carroll was an only child and grew up on a farm near Lansing, Michigan. He was introduced to paleontology by his father shortly after his fifth birthday, and by the time he was eight he had decided he wanted to be a vertebrate paleontologist. In that same year he received as a Christmas present the left femur of an Allosaurus, courtesy of Edwin H. Colbert, whom his father had told about his interest. In his teen years his parents took him on many fossil hunting trips to Wyoming and South Dakota.

After high-school, he went to Michigan State University, where he received a B.Sc. in 1959, majoring in Geology. From there he went to Harvard University where he studied biology and palaeontology under Alfred Sherwood Romer for his M.A. (1961) and Ph.D. degrees (1963); Carroll was Romer's last student. His doctoral thesis dealt with what is now known as Dissorophoidea, a group of Paleozoic amphibians that are often considered the closest relatives of present day amphibians, although they may also be stem-tetrapods if lissamphibians instead arose from within Lepospondyli.

After obtaining his Ph.D., Carroll held a National Research Council (NRC) postdoctoral fellowship at Redpath Museum at McGill University in Montreal (1962-1963), and then a National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral position at the Natural History Museum in London. During this time, he studied tetrapod remains from the Pennsylvanian lycopod “tree stumps” at Joggins, Nova Scotia (a variety of temnospondyls, microsaurs, and basal amniotes). Most of this material was collected and first studied by Sir William Dawson, the first Principal of McGill University, in the nineteenth century.

Returning from London, in 1964 Carroll joined the permanent staff of McGill University as curator of geology at the Redpath Museum and became the curator of vertebrate paleontology the following year. At McGill, he was an assistant professor of zoology from 1964 to 1969, an associate professor of biology from 1969-1974, a full professor from 1974 onwards, and was appointed Strathcona Professor of Zoology in 1987. From 1985 to 1991 he was director of the Redpath Museum. He was an active professor until 2003, after which he was an emeritus professor.

Carroll died on April 7, 2020, in Westmount, Quebec, of complications from COVID-19. He was survived by his wife, Anna Di Turi, a retired business school teacher, and his one child, David, and granddaughter Juliette.

Scientific research

Carroll was a prolific publisher and studied numerous major topics within paleontology and vertebrate evolution. He is best known for his work addressing the origins and early evolution of amphibians and reptiles and published extensively on lepospondyls, which have been variably considered as ancestors of amphibians or early reptiles. In a related vein, he also published numerous summary articles examining the evolution of tetrapods on land. He is also well published on marine reptiles.

He also published a number of books, including Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution (1988), which remains a seminal textbook, Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution (1997), and The Rise of Amphibians: 365 Million Years of Evolution (2009). He coauthored another textbook, Paleontology (1998), and a volume of the Handbook of Paleoherpetology on lepospondyls (1998). He also edited a volume of the Amphibian Biology series on the evolutionary history of amphibians (2000).

Carroll contributed to naming an extensive number of new species, outlined below:

Several taxa are named after Carroll, including the teleost fish Mahengecharax carrolli, the 'microsaurs' Bolterpeton carrolli (now a synonym of the parareptile Delorhynchus) and Carrolla craddocki, and the captorhinid Opisthodontosaurus carrolli. He was honored with a festschrift in 2003.

Carroll was awarded a large number of awards, including the Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society (1978), of which he was one of the first recipients, the Elkanah Billings Medal of the Geological Association of Canada (1991), the Willet G. Miller Medal of the Royal Society of Canada (2001), of which he was made an honorary member in 1993, and the Romer-Simpson Medal of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (2004), the society's most prestigious honor, and was appointed a member of the Order of Canada (2019). Carroll also served as the president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology from 1982 to 1983. The Canadian Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's Carroll Prize is named after Carroll.

Carroll is often credited with being the "father of Canadian vertebrate paleontology" because many contemporary Canadian paleontologists can trace their graduate training back to him. Carroll supervised numerous graduate students, many of whom went on to lead their own successful research labs, including Jason Anderson (University of Calgary), Michael Caldwell (University of Alberta), Philip Currie (University of Alberta), and Robert Reisz (University of Toronto).

References

References

1. Sues, Hans-Dieter. (2003). "Robert Lynn Carroll — an appreciation". Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.
2. "science.ca : Robert L. Carroll".
3. "2004 A. S. Romer-G. G. Simpson Medal".
4. (2020-05-04). "Robert "Bob" Lynn Carroll (1938 - 2020): The 'academic ancestor' of Canadian vertebrate palaeontology". Vertebrate Anatomy Morphology Palaeontology.
5. Anderson, Jason S.. (2008-11-12). "Focal Review: The Origin(s) of Modern Amphibians". Evolutionary Biology.
6. (2011-01-21). "The origin of modern amphibians: a re-evaluation". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
7. (2017-06-19). "Stem caecilian from the Triassic of Colorado sheds light on the origins of Lissamphibia". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
8. (1997). "A New Perspective on Tetrapod Phylogeny". Elsevier.
9. (2007-06-01). "Fossils, Molecules, Divergence Times, and the Origin of Lissamphibians". Systematic Biology.
10. Pyron, R. Alexander. (2011-05-03). "Divergence Time Estimation Using Fossils as Terminal Taxa and the Origins of Lissamphibia". Systematic Biology.
11. "Directors of the Museum, Past and Present".
12. (April 25, 2020). "COVID-19 has taken our parents, our grandparents, our friends. Here are a few, to help remember the many | National Post".
13. CARROLL, ROBERT L.. (2007). "The Palaeozoic Ancestry of Salamanders, Frogs and Caecilians". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
14. (2003). "Ontogenetic evidence for the Paleozoic ancestry of salamanders". Evolution and Development.
15. Carroll, Robert L.. (1977). "Patterns of Evolution as Illustrated by the Fossil Record". Elsevier.
16. Carroll, Robert L.. (1969). "Problems of the Origin of Reptiles". Biological Reviews.
17. Carroll, Robert L.. (1969). "A Middle Pennsylvanian Captorhinomorph, and the Interrelationships of Primitive Reptiles". Journal of Paleontology.
18. Carroll, Robert L.. (1970-02-19). "The ancestry of reptiles". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences.
19. Carroll, Robert L.. (1964). "The earliest reptiles". Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology.
20. Carroll, Robert L.. (1982). "Early Evolution of Reptiles". Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics.
21. (1991). "The oldest microsaur (Amphibia)". Journal of Paleontology.
22. (1995-03-14). "Vertebral Development in the Oldest Microsaur and the Problem of "Lepospondyl" Relationships". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
23. Carroll, Robert L.. (1989). "Developmental aspects of lepospondyl vertebrae in Paleozoic tetrapods". Historical Biology.
24. CARROLL, ROBERT. (1966). "Microsaurs from the Westphalian B of Joggins, Nova Scotia". Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London.
25. Carroll, Robert L.. (2001). "The origin and early Radiation of terrestrial vertebrates". Journal of Paleontology.
26. Carroll, Robert L.. (1992). "The Primary Radiation of Terrestrial Vertebrates". Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
27. Carroll, Robert L.. (1993). "Evaluation of geological age and environmental factors in changing aspects of the terrestrial vertebrate fauna during the Carboniferous". Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
28. (2005). "Thermal physiology and the origin of terrestriality in vertebrates". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
29. (1995-09-14). "The pectoral girdle and forelimb ofCarsosaurus marchesetti(Aigialosauridae), with a preliminary phylogenetic analysis of mosasauroids and varanoids". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
30. (1992-03-06). "Aigialosaurs: mid-Cretaceous varanoid lizards". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
31. (1993). "The Origin of Mosasaurs as a Model of Macroevolutionary Patterns and Processes". Springer US.
32. Carroll, Robert L.. (1997). "Mesozoic Marine Reptiles as Models of Long-Term, Large-Scale Evolutionary Phenomena". Elsevier.
33. (1985-04-16). "The nothosaur Pachypleurosaurus and the origin of plesiosaurs". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences.
34. Carroll, Robert L. (Robert Lynn), 1938-. (1988). "Vertebrate paleontology and evolution". W.H. Freeman and Company.
35. Carroll, Robert L. (Robert Lynn), 1938-. (1997). "Patterns and processes of vertebrate evolution". Cambridge University Press.
36. Carroll, Robert L. (Robert Lynn), 1938-. (2009). "The rise of amphibians : 365 million years of evolution". Johns Hopkins University Press.
37. Stearn, Colin William, 1928-. (1989). "Paleontology : the record of life". J. Wiley.
38. (1998). "Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie = Encyclopedia of paleoherpetology".
39. (2009). "Amphibian biology".
40. Carroll, Robert L.. (1990). "A tiny microsaur from the Lower Permian of Texas: size constraints in Palaeozoic tetrapods". Palaeontology.
41. (1982). "A Bipedal Lizardlike Reptile from the Karroo". Journal of Paleontology.
42. (1981-07-16). "Plesiosaur ancestors from the Upper Permian of Madagascar". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences.
43. Carroll, Robert L. (Robert Lynn), 1938-. (1978). "The order Microsauria". American Philosophical Society.
44. (1977). "Kenyasaurus, a New Eosuchian Reptile from the Early Triassic of Kenya". Journal of Paleontology.
45. (1973). "Romeriid reptiles from the Lower Permian". Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College..
46. Carroll, Robert L.. (1967-01-01). "An Adelogyrinid Lepospondyl Amphibian from the Upper Carboniferous". Canadian Journal of Zoology.
47. Carroll, Robert L.. (1967). "A Limnoscelid Reptile from the Middle Pennsylvanian". Journal of Paleontology.
48. (1967-07-07). "Romeriscus, the Oldest Known Reptile". Science.
49. Carroll, Robert L.. (1964). "Early evolution of the dissorophid amphibians". Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College.
50. Carroll, Robert L.. (1964). "The relationships of the rhachitomous amphibian Parioxys". American Museum Novitates.
51. Dunlevy, T'Cha. (2019-06-27). "Alanis Obomsawin, 15 other Quebecers to receive Order of Canada". Montreal Gazette.
52. General, Office of the Secretary to the Governor. (2019-06-20). "Governor General Announces 83 New Appointments to the Order of Canada".
53. "SVP - Past Presidents".
54. (2016-02-24). "Robert Lynn Carroll Prize".