Farish Alston Jenkins | |
|---|---|
 On safari in Tanzania. | |
| Born | 19 May 1940 |
| Died | 11 November 2012 (aged 72) |
| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Awards | Romer-Simpson Medal (2009) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Harvard University Columbia University |
| Thesis | The Postcranial Skeleton of African Cynodonts and Problems in the Evolution of Mammalian Postcranial Anatomy (1969) |
Farish Alston Jenkins (May 19, 1940 – November 11, 2012) was a professor at Harvard University who studied and taught paleontology. His discoveries included a transitional creature with characteristics of both fish and land animals — Tiktaalik roseae —and one of the earliest known frogs, Prosalirus bitis.[1][2][3][4]
Early life
Farish Jenkins was born in Manhattan on May 19, 1940.[5] He was the oldest of three sons of a marketing executive but was raised by his grandmother in Colorado while his father served in World War II.[5][6]
While he was a student at Princeton, studying geology, Jenkins met Eleanor Tracy. He later married her and they had two children — Henry Edgar and Katherine Temperance.[6] He obtained a master's and doctorate from Yale and served as a captain in the United States Marine Corps.
As a graduate student at Yale, Jenkins took a trip to Nairobi where he is said to have taken his first interest in live animal research: "At the time, black rhinos in the bush were as thick as rats in a dump. With my camera set on self-timer, I managed to pose with one before the beast came on with a charge. I barely made it back to my Morris Minor in time, lost a lens cap on the way, but became, as a result of those three weeks, as much intrigued by living vertebrates as by their extinct relatives."[6]
Academic career
He went on to teach at both Columbia and Harvard. In his later life, Jenkins served at Harvard as a professor of biology, the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Jenkins made numerous expeditions to the Arctic, including a dozen expeditions to the Triassic of Jameson Land in Greenland, and to other sites from East Africa to Wyoming. He is credited as having helped explain the fish-to-tetrapod evolutionary transition as he helped discover the 375 million year old Tiktaalik roseae.[7]
Jenkins was known for his eccentricity as a professor. When lecturing on the subject of gait, he would illustrate this by walking on a peg leg as the character Captain Ahab from Herman Melville's Moby Dick. When on expedition, he would dress in the dashing style of Indiana Jones and carry a high-powered rifle.
He used cineradiography to take internal pictures of animals moving in various ways. These could be quite elaborate and exciting, using treadmills and a wind tunnel. "Tree shrews ricocheted across my bookshelves and desk," he reminisced.[2]
After being diagnosed with cancer, he said "as a paleontologist, I'm familiar with extinction." He died from pneumonia at Brigham and Women's Hospital on November 11, 2012.
References
- ↑ Shubin, N. (2012). "Farish A. Jenkins Jr (1940–2012)". Nature. 492 (7427): 42. Bibcode:2012Natur.492...42S. doi:10.1038/492042a. PMID 23222601.
- 1 2 "Farish Jenkins", The Economist, p. 98, November 17, 2012
- ↑ Shubin, N. H.; Daeschler, E. B.; Jenkins, F. A. (2014). "Pelvic girdle and fin of Tiktaalik roseae". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111 (3): 893–899. Bibcode:2014PNAS..111..893S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1322559111. PMC 3903263. PMID 24449831.
- ↑ Johnson, Carolyn Y. (2014-01-13). "Discovery provides insight into origin of limbs". Science. The Boston Globe. Boson, MA: Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC. Retrieved 2014-01-13.
- 1 2 Douglas Martin (November 30, 2012), "Farish Jenkins, Expert on Evolving Fossils, Dies at 72", The New York Times
- 1 2 3 Karen Weintraub (November 14, 2012), "Farish Jenkins, paleontologist, Harvard teacher", The Boston Globe
- ↑ Downs, J. P.; Daeschler, E. B.; Jenkins, F. A.; Shubin, N. H. (2008). "The cranial endoskeleton of Tiktaalik roseae". Nature. 455 (7215): 925–929. Bibcode:2008Natur.455..925D. doi:10.1038/nature07189. PMID 18923515. S2CID 4411801.