David William Steadman is a paleontologist and ornithologist, and Curator Emeritus of ornithology at the

Florida Museum of Natural History The Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) is Florida's official state-sponsored and chartered natural history museum. Its main facilities are located at 3215 Hull Road on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, Gaine ...

at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida and a preem ...

. His research has concentrated on the

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

biogeography Biogeography is the study of the species distribution, distribution of species and ecosystems in geography, geographic space and through evolutionary history of life, geological time. Organisms and biological community (ecology), communities o ...

, conservation, and

extinction Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

of tropical birds, particularly in the islands of the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. He has also authored over 180 scientific publications. Steadman trained at the University of Arizona as a student of Paul S. Martin, supported by a Predoctoral Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution. He has conducted a number of digs at prehistoric sites and uncovered widescale extinctions caused by humans in the early stages of colonisation. He has conducted several expeditions to the

Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands () are an archipelago of volcanic islands in the Eastern Pacific, located around the equator, west of the mainland of South America. They form the Galápagos Province of the Republic of Ecuador, with a population of sli ...

, and has described a number of extinct species of birds and more recently was involved in discovering that the Solomon Islands frogmouth is a species (instead of a subspecies of the marbled frogmouth, as formerly believed). He worked extensively on Easter Island, carrying out the first systematic excavations of the island in order to identify the plants and animals that once lived there.University of Florida News (2007)
UF scientists discover new genus of frogmouth bird in Solomon Islands
Accessed 1 March 2008

Education

* Bachelor's degree in Biology from Edinboro State College in 1973. * Master's degree in Zoology from the University of Florida in 1975. * Doctorate in Geosciences from the University of Arizona in 1982.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American ornithologists University of Florida College of Agricultural and Life Sciences alumni University of Florida faculty {{US-ornithologist-stub