Autobiography (through may 2009)

Abstract

My research interests are the morphology and systematicsof turtles, primarily as seen in the fossil record. Turtles are agood group for phylogenetic problems: they have a longhistory with a diverse fossil record and a good sampling ofliving taxa that allow for accurate identification of structures.I became an early proponent of phylogenetic systematicsdue to the influence of Gary Nelson and BobbSchaeffer in the late 1960s, and I was very fortunate to bepresent during the development of cladistics at one of itsprimary centers, the American Museum of Natural History(AMNH). Although most of my publications consist of thedocumentation and analysis of morphology, I think that mymain scientific achievement has been the increase of phylogeneticknowledge of turtles using cladistic methodology.I never had an overall plan, but in retrospect my researchreveals an accidentally sensible pattern. After doing ageneral treatise on turtle skull morphology (Gaffney 1979),I concentrated on the earliest turtles (Triassic and Jurassic)and the largest group of turtles, the cryptodires. I havedevoted the past decade to the other main clade, thepleurodires.