Eugene S. Gaffney is an American paleontologist and leading authority on the morphology and evolutionary history of turtles.

Biography

Gaffney graduated from Rutgers State University in 1965 and received his PhD in 1969 with a thesis on "The North American Baenoidea and the Cryptodire-Pleurodire Dichotomy" from Columbia University, where he also taught as an adjunct professor for most of his career. He was hired as Curator of Fossil Reptiles, Amphibians, and Birds in 1970 in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology,

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

. Beginning at the rank of Assistant Curator in 1970, he was promoted to Associate Curator in 1973 and to Curator in 1980. He retired in 2007 as Curator Emeritus.He has authored over 100 publications on turtle systematics and phylogeny. Dr. Gaffney pioneered the use of cladistics in turtle research. He has done fieldwork in Canada and the United States, central Europe, southern Africa, China, Argentina, Brazil, and especially Australia, where he has studied the evolution of the '' Meiolania'', the giant horned turtle.

Accolades

The Gaffney Turtle Symposium on fossil turtles was held in his honor at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, in 2009. The symposium resulted in a Publication containing a number of papers in fields associated with Gaffney as well as two biographies and a complete bibliography of Gaffney. Several species of fossil turtles, including the protostegid sea turtle, ''

Santanachelys gaffneyi ''Santanachelys gaffneyi'' is an extinct species of sea turtle. It is the only species in the genus ''Santanachelys'', which itself is a member of the extinct family Protostegidae. The species was first described from a 20-centimeter long fossi ...

'', '' Gaffneylania auricularis'',''Gaffneylania auricularis''
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Fossilworks Fossilworks is a portal which provides query, download, and analysis tools to facilitate access to the Paleobiology Database The Paleobiology Database is an online resource for information on the distribution and classification of fossil animals ...

.org and the

Macrobaenid Macrobaenidae is an extinct family of turtles, known from the Early Cretaceous to Paleogene of Laurasia. Their relationships to other turtles and whether or not they form a monophlyletic group are controversial. They are typically interpreted a ...

''Aurorachelys gaffneyi''Deborah Vandermark, John A. Tarduno, Donald B. Brinkman, Rory D. Cottrell and Stephanie Mason, (2009). New Late Cretaceous macrobaenid turtle with Asian affinities from the High Canadian Arctic: Dispersal via ice-free polar routes. Geology February 2009 v. 37 no. 2 p. 183-18
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Selected publications

* Brinkman, D.B., Holroyd, P.A., Gardner, J.D. (2012).(editors) "Morphology and Evolution of Turtles: Proceedings of the Gaffney Turtle Symposium 2009". Springer Dordrecht, 577 pp. * Gaffney, E,S. (1972). The systematics of the North American family Baenidae (Reptilia, Cryptodira). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 147: 241–320. * Gaffney, E. S. (1975). A phylogeny and classification of the higher categories of turtles. '' Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History'' 155(5): 389–436
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* Gaffney, E. S. (1979). The Jurassic turtles of North America. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 162 (3): 91-136. * Gaffney, E. S. (1979). An introduction to the logic of phylogeny reconstruction. In J. Cracraft and N. Eldredge (editors), ''Phylogenetic analysis and paleontology'': 79-111. New York: Columbia University Press. * Gaffney, E. S. (1980). Phylogenetic relationships of the major groups of amniotes. In A. L. Panchen (editor), ''The terrestrial environment and the origin of land vertebrates'': 593–610. London, New York: Academic Press. * Gaffney, E. S., & P. A. Meylan. (1988). A phylogeny of turtles. In M. J. Benton, (editor), ''The phylogeny and classification of tetrapods'': 157–219. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Gaffney, E. S. (1990). ''Dinosaurs A Golden Guide''. Western Publishing Company, Inc. 160 pp. * Norell, M. A., Gaffney, E. S., & Dingus, L. (1995). ''Discovering Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History''. Alfred A. Knopf, 204 pp. * Gaffney, E. S. (1996) The postcranial morphology of ''Meiolania platyceps'' and a review of the Meiolaniidae. ''Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History'' ; no. 22
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* Gaffney, E. S., Tong, H., & Meylan, P. A. (2006) Evolution of the side-necked turtles : the families Bothremydidae, Euraxemydidae, and Araripemydidae. ''Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History'', no. 30
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*

Notes

External links

Research.amnh.org: American Museum of Natural History − Phylogeny of turtles
— ''official website of Eugene Gaffney''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gaffney, Eugene S. American paleontologists Paleozoologists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American herpetologists American taxonomists People associated with the American Museum of Natural History Rutgers University alumni 20th-century American zoologists 21st-century American zoologists