Richard P.S. Jefferies was a

paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

famous for developing the Calcichordate Theory of the origin of

chordate A chordate ( ) is a bilaterian animal belonging to the phylum Chordata ( ). All chordates possess, at some point during their larval or adult stages, five distinctive physical characteristics ( synapomorphies) that distinguish them from ot ...

s, now widely discredited. Jefferies joined the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

in 1960, and was largely based there for the remainder of his career. He died in June 2020 at the age of 88.

Developing the Calcichordate Theory

Jefferies first came into contact with some

carpoid Homalozoa is an obsolete extinct subphylum of Paleozoic era echinoderms, prehistoric marine invertebrates. They are also referred to as carpoids. Description The Homalozoa lacked the typical pentamer body form of other echinoderms, but all were ...

material in February 1964; some

mitrate Mitrates are an extinct group of stem group echinoderms, which may be closely related to the hemichordates. Along with the cornutes, they form one half of the Stylophora. Morphology The organisms were a few millimetres long. Like the echinod ...

s that had been brought into the museum from

Shropshire Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West M ...

, and by 1967 he published a paper entitled "Some chordates with Echinoderm affinities" with regards the mitrates, which are commonly viewed as apentameral echinoderms. Over the years, he continuously added to the theory, which was modified later such that each chordate evolved from its own mitrate and as such are paraphyletic.

References

External links

Abstract of review at Springerlink.com
Employees of the British Museum English palaeontologists 2020 deaths {{palaeontologist-stub