Response by Jonathan Payne for the presentation of the 2015 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Abstract

Thank you, Andy, for your kind words. And thank you to the Paleontological Society for choosing to recognize my research with this award. It is an honor to be named alongside so many of the people who have inspired, instructed, and befriended me over the past two decades. Jonathan Payne I was introduced to paleontology by a geochemist. When I was six, Rich April of Colgate University took his two older kids, my brother, and me out to a quarry in Devonian rocks from the Hamilton Group to look for trilobites. As most of you have no doubt already guessed, we found many more brachiopods than trilobites. But Rich found one beautiful specimen of Dipleura dekayi (Green, 1832) and gave it to me because I was the only kid over five and therefore least likely to break it. It took a few more years, but I eventually found one on my own, a more complete and slightly larger individual. I found it not while fossil hunting, but rather, in the course of throwing rocks into a stream with a friend. That specimen is in my office today. Does this abbreviated prehistory of a paleontologist explain anything that …