Schuchert Award Research Articles

Presentation of the 2022 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Matt Friedman

Presentation of the 2022 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Matt Friedman

Presentation of the 2021 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Melanie Jane Hopkins

Presentation of the 2021 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Melanie Jane Hopkins

Response by Melanie Hopkins for the presentation of the 2021 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Response by Melanie Hopkins for the presentation of the 2021 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Response by Lee Hsiang Liow for the presentation of the 2020 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Presentation of the 2020 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Lee Hsiang Liow

Presentation of the 2020 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Lee Hsiang Liow

Presentation of the 2019 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Jingmai O'Connor

Presentation of the 2019 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Jingmai O'Connor

Response by Jingmai O'Connor for the presentation of the 2019 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Response by Jingmai O'Connor for the presentation of the 2019 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Response by Seth Finnegan for the presentation of the 2018 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Response by Seth Finnegan for the presentation of the 2018 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Presentation of the 2018 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Seth Finnegan

Presentation of the 2018 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Seth Finnegan

Presentation of the 2017 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Caroline A.E. Strömberg

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Response by Caroline Strömberg for the presentation of the 2017 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Response by Caroline Strömberg for the presentation of the 2017 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Presentation of the 2016 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Alycia L. Stigall

It is a privilege to be able to stand here and present my first graduate student with the Charles Schuchert Award. Being a mentor to students like Alycia is undoubtedly the most satisfying part of being a professor. She is a highly deserving Schuchert awardee, not only for her incredible scientific acumen, but also because of her quality and integrity as an individual. This merit is further buttressed by the tireless work she has performed as a scientist, educator, and mentor, and in the service she has done on behalf of our society and discipline. It was an amazing professional opportunity to have such an outstanding student early in my career. Alycia arrived possessing not only a superlative academic background, but also a coveted NSF graduate research fellowship. …

Response by Alycia L. Stigall for the presentation of the 2016 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Thank you, Bruce, for your generous words. I deeply thank the Paleontological Society for recognizing me with this honor. I truly am very grateful and humbled to be selected as the 2016 Schuchert Award recipient. As a brachiopod worker who grew up Cincinnati, the Charles Schuchert award holds special significance to me. It is a great joy to receive this award bearing the name of such a notable Cincinnatian brachiopod worker. I am also deeply honored to now be included among the prestigious set of 44 prior awardees. It is particularly gratifying as I am only the fifth woman to receive this award, and first woman who was a mother at the time of the award. Alycia L. Stigall I am extremely thankful to be a paleontologist today. Paleontology is becoming an ever more inclusive and collaborative science. As I look out from this podium, I see a wonderful diversity of paleontologists, diversity of scientific approaches, diversity of focal taxa, diversity of gender, diversity of ethnicities and nationalities. Our diversity makes our discipline stronger. However, barriers to full and equitable participation in science for women and minorities remain considerable. Implicit bias, higher expectations, under-recognition, harassment, and isolation remain substantial concerns. As a society …

Presentation of the 2014 Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Shanan E. Peters

Presentation of the 2014 Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Shanan E. Peters

Presentation of the 2015 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Jonathan Payne

Presentation of the 2015 Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Jonathan Payne

Response by Shanan E. Peters for the presentation of the 2014 Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society

Thank you Michael, for your kind words, and thank you to the Paleontological Society for this recognition. It is a humbling privilege to have my name appended to such a distinguished list of previous awardees. It is also thrilling that this award bears the name of the remarkable Ohio-born paleontologist, Charles Schuchert, who began his pursuit of paleontology in much the same way that this Ohio boy did—plucking fossils from the gray slopes of the Cincinnatian. Shanan E. Peters Some eleven years ago, in his acceptance speech for this same award, Steven Holland acknowledged the Paleobiology Database and the vision of John Alroy and Charles Marshall in creating it. Steve predicted then that beyond the analysis of Phanerozoic diversity, the Paleobiology Database would become an integral part of our field programs because it would “ensure that we build upon the data of the generations that have come before us and that our data are preserved for the generations that follow.” Eleven years …

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

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 …

Presentation of the 2013 Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Bridget S. Wade

The Charles Schuchert Award is presented to a person under 40 whose work early in his or her career reflects excellence and promise in the science of paleontology, and thus reflects the objectives and standards of the Paleontological Society. Dr. Bridget S. Wade is the 2013 recipient of the Charles Schuchert Award. Since receiving her Ph.D. Bridget has produced outstanding achievements in micropaleontology and paleoceanography. She is internationally recognized for her research on Paleogene climate and oceanography, Cenozoic planktonic foraminiferal taxonomy, evolution, and extinction. She has broadened her research skills through numerous collaborations and work at multiple institutions, including Leeds University (B.Sc., Advanced Research Fellowship), the University of Edinburgh (Ph.D.), Cardiff University (NERC Postdoctoral Fellowship), Rutgers University (Lindemann Research Fellowship), and Texas A&M University (Assistant Professorship). She recently was appointed to a Professorship in the Department of Earth Sciences at University College, London. Since receiving her Ph.D. in 2001, Bridget's research quality and productivity have been consistently high, having published a total of 41 papers in high profile, peer reviewed journals and among these she is the lead author on 15 papers. Her research integrates geology, foraminiferal taxonomy and biostratigraphy with stable isotope geochemistry, astrochronology, and magnetostratigraphy, the latter of which enables high-resolution age stratigraphic control. Bridget's extensive field work includes ocean drilling and piston coring cruises, field work in Cyprus, Italy, Tanzania, Mozambique, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Australia, and various regions of the U.S. has provided detailed links between biotic, paleoclimatic and paleoceanographic events that occurred during the Cenozoic. Her research has led to significant improvements in the Cenozoic time scale and increased accuracy and resolution of the timing of evolution, extinction and acme events for Cenozoic planktonic foraminifera. Bridget is a leading contributor to studies of critical intervals of climate change during the Cenozoic. Some of Bridget's more …

Presentation of the 2012 Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to Gene Hunt

I am delighted and honored to present Gene Hunt as the winner of the 2012 Charles Schuchert Award. Gene has truly become a leader in evolutionary paleontology, skilled at turning challenging problems into crisp questions that can be addressed in the fossil record in creative and rigorous ways. I recently reread a letter that rightly praises Gene for his “impressive skill with both analytic and synthetic thinking” and his remarkable ability to ask questions “in his rather unassuming way” that “strike right to the conceptual core” of an issue. What's remarkable about this letter is that it wasn't written in support of his nomination for this award but was sent in connection with his application to graduate school. This raises two points. First, it can be risky to recruit as presenter someone with a long history with the recipient, although I can assure Gene of my discretion in this regard. And second, it attests that Gene showed great talent and promise at a very early stage. Gene finished his Bachelor's in Biology at Duke University with little direct experience in paleontology, although he clearly was already interested in larger-scale, macroevolutionary questions. His first serious encounter with paleontology was as a summer intern in the Smithsonian's terrific Research Training Program, where he analyzed ontogenetic shape changes in agnostids (which may or may not be trilobites). I think he still had trilobites in mind when he arrived in Chicago, in fact I remember his frighteningly precocious brown-bag talk as an early grad student, on his agnostid work and his approaches to partitioning specimens into discrete instars. As a graduate student Gene became especially interested in bridging between micro- and macroevolution, not in a simplistic extrapolationist way but in terms of really coming to grips with how processes at the organismic and population …

Presentation of the 2011 Charles Schuchert Award of the Paleontological Society to C. Kevin Boyce

Fellow paleontologists, I first came to know Kevin Boyce around the turn of the century, when, as a graduate student at Harvard, he was working out a novel scheme to characterize leaf morphology. It was clear from the get-go that this was someone to watch. Kevin's mentor Andy Knoll has sent many first-rate paleontologists into the world, but this was one of those cases where the advisor just needs to stand out of the way and let the student go full-tilt. Already as a student, Kevin had the vision and drive to work independently. And, like many a young scholar seeking to avoid distractions at the office, he wrote his Ph.D. thesis sitting at home. But he used an additional ‘trick’: he always wore a necktie while writing, to keep himself disciplined. Prior to doing his Ph.D. at Harvard, Kevin earned not one but two bachelor's degrees from CalTech (where, among other things, he worked with Joe Kirschvink on the sensitivity of honeybees to magnetic fields). His dual degrees might not stand out in these days of hypercompetitive undergrads pursuing triple and quadruple majors, but I've always been struck by the fact that he has a Bachelor of Science … in Literature . Now, if you ask Kevin about this, he'll respond that CalTech only gives B.S. degrees regardless of the field, but I know from talking with him about a whole range of topics that he approaches everything with the same imagination and insight that he brings to paleontology. For example, he has thoroughly studied the King James Bible and has developed a reinterpretation of the Old Testament … as a comedy . His interest in literature goes far beyond reading—he writes poetry that has been described as beautiful. In fact, he wanted to become a writer, …