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

turtle Turtles are an order of reptiles known as Testudines, characterized by a special shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked t ...

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 Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, 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. 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 Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived cha ...

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 ''Meiolania'' ("small roamer") is an extinct genus of meiolaniid stem-turtle native to Australasia from the Middle Miocene to Late Pleistocene and possibly Holocene. It is best known from fossils found on Lord Howe Island, though fossils are know ...

'', the giant horned turtle.

Accolades

The Gaffney Turtle Symposium on fossil turtles was held in his honor at the

Royal Tyrrell Museum The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology (RTMP, and often referred to as the Royal Tyrrell Museum) is a palaeontology museum and research facility in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. The museum was named in honour of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, and is situ ...

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'', '' Gaffneylania auricularis'',''Gaffneylania auricularis''
at Fossilworks.org and the Macrobaenid ''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
abstract
/ref> have also been named in his honor.

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 The ''Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal in the fields of zoology, paleontology, and geology. It is part of a group of journals published by the American Museum of Natural History, in which c ...

'' 155(5): 389–436
on-line
* 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
on-line
* 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
on-line
*

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