John Flynn elected as AAAS Fellow
Frick Curator of Fossil Mammals and Professor and Dean of the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the American Museum of Natural History, John Flynn, has been awarded the distinction of Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). On December 17, it was announced that Dr. Flynn was elected by his peers for "distinguished contributions in vertebrate paleontology, especially carnivore evolution and faunal succession in South America, and for development of the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the Museum."
"This honor emphasizes the value of Museum-based research and encyclopedic collections," says Dr. Flynn. "My research is highly inter-disciplinary, integrating field and laboratory work, spanning many facets of geology and biology. Through the discovery and analysis of fossil mammals, my work tries to resolve interesting geologic questions like the history of the Andes and the relationship between faunal shifts through time and tectonic and environmental changes. I also think that it is essential to integrate studies of living and fossil forms to better resolve evolutionary relationships and to build a more stable and complete framework for investigating intriguing problems like the patterns and processes of body and brain size changes during the evolution of carnivores."
Dr. Flynn's research focuses on the evolution of mammals and Mesozoic vertebrates, geological dating, plate tectonics, and biogeography. He has spent his career searching for important new fossil localities in Chile, Perú, Colombia, Madagascar, Angola, India, and the Rocky Mountains. This field research, now passing 50 expeditions, has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, NASA, and other organizations. Dr. Flynn also is a member of the faculties at Columbia University, at City University of New York, and with New York Consortium on Evolutionary Primatology. In 2001 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for a year of research, writing, and expeditions in South America.
Since coming to the Museum, Dr. Flynn has helped to expand and enhance its world-leading fossil mammal collections. He also has been deeply involved in integrating research with Museum exhibition and educational programs, including curating the major current exhibition, Extreme Mammals: The Biggest, Smallest, and Most Amazing Mammals of All Time which engages the public in cutting-edge science. Dr. Flynn also was integral to the launching of the Richard Gilder Graduate School, making the Museum the first such institution in North America with the ability to grant degrees. The graduate school's doctoral program in comparative biology at the Museum was fully accredited by New York State last month.
"The Museum's specimen-centered, comparative approach permeates the graduate program that we created," says Dr. Flynn. "As the first dean, it was appealing to be able to contribute to developing the graduate school in a way that was not pre-determined, but rather can incorporate the best in existing methods as well as innovative approaches." In addition, Dr. Flynn notes that "Our new Ph.D. program complements the Museum's outstanding K-12 and teacher training programs and further strengthens our longstanding graduate education partnerships with the City University of New York, Columbia, Cornell, and New York University."
Provided by American Museum of Natural History
