James Allen Hopson (born 1935) is an American

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

and

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

(now retired) at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

. His work has focused on the

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

of the synapsids (a group of amniotes that includes the mammals), and has been focused on the transition from basal synapsids to mammals, from the late

Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ' ...

through the

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...

Eras. He received his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...

at Chicago in 1965, and worked at

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

before returning to Chicago in 1967 as a faculty member in

Anatomy Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...

, and has also been a research associate at the Field Museum of Natural History since 1971. He has also worked on the

paleobiology Paleobiology (or palaeobiology) is an interdisciplinary field that combines the methods and findings found in both the earth sciences and the life sciences. Paleobiology is not to be confused with geobiology, which focuses more on the interactio ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

s, and his work, along with that of

Peter Dodson Peter Dodson (born August 20, 1946) is an American paleontologist who has published many papers and written and collaborated on books about dinosaurs. An authority on Ceratopsians, he has also authored several papers and textbooks on hadrosaurs a ...

, has become a foundation piece for the modern understanding of duckbill crests, social behavior, and variation.

Selected publications

* *Hopson, J.A. & H.R. Barghusen. 1986. An analysis of therapsid relationships. In: The Ecology and Biology of Mammal-like Reptiles (Ed. by N. Hotton III, P. D. MacLean, J. J. Roth, & E. C. Roth), pp. 83–106. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. *Hopson, J.A. 1991. Systematics of the non-mammalian Synapsida and implications for patterns of evolution in synapsids. In: Controversial Views on the Origin of Higher Categories of Vertebrates (Ed. by H. P. Schultze & L. Trueb), Ithaca: Cornell University Press. *Allin, E.F. & J.A. Hopson. 1991. Evolution of the auditory system in Synapsida ("mammal-like reptiles" and primitive mammals) as seen in the fossil record. In: The Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (Ed. by D. B. Webster, A. Popper, and R. Fay), New York: Springer-Verlag. *Wible, J. R. & J. A. Hopson. 1993. Basicranial evidence for early mammal phylogeny. In: Mammal Phylogeny (Ed. by F. S. Szalay, M. J. Novacek, & M. C. McKenna), New York: Springer-Verlag. * *

References

Bibliography

A. W. Crompton, Farish A. Jenkins, Jr., Susan Hopson, Timothy J. Gaudin, and Matthew T. Carrano, "James Allen Hopson: A Biography", pages 507-515 in ''Amniote Paleobiology: Perspectives on the Evolution of Mammals, Birds, and Reptiles: A volume honoring James Allen Hopson'', edited by Matthew T. Carrano, Timothy J. Gaudin, Richard W. Blob, and John R. Wible. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 2006

External links

Organismal Biology & Anatomy
faculty homepage

faculty homepage
Recent work
on the evolution of the mammalian ear {{DEFAULTSORT:Hopson, James Living people American paleontologists People associated with the Field Museum of Natural History 1935 births