Laurie R. Godfrey (born August 27, 1945) is an American paleontologist and physical anthropologist. She is emeritus professor of anthropology at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...

. Her research has focused on the evolutionary history of the present-day

lemur Lemurs ( ) (from Latin ''lemures'' – ghosts or spirits) are wet-nosed primates of the superfamily Lemuroidea (), divided into 8 families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 existing species. They are endemic to the island of Madagas ...

populations of

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

. An outspoken critic of creationism and advocate for the teaching of

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 ...

in schools, she has edited three books on the subject: ''Scientists Confront Creationism'' (1983), ''What Darwin Began: Modern Darwinian and Non-Darwinian Perspectives on Evolution'' (1985), and (with A.J. Petto) ''Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism'' (2007).

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* Living people 1945 births American women anthropologists American paleontologists Women paleontologists Harvard University alumni University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty Critics of creationism Physical anthropologists American anthropologists American women academics 21st-century American women {{US-anthropologist-stub