Gregory Donald Edgecombe is a paleontologist who is a merit researcher in the department of Earth Sciences at the

Natural History Museum, London The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum (Lo ...

. He is a leading figure in understanding the evolution of

arthropod Arthropods ( ) are invertebrates in the phylum Arthropoda. They possess an arthropod exoskeleton, exoskeleton with a cuticle made of chitin, often Mineralization (biology), mineralised with calcium carbonate, a body with differentiated (Metam ...

s, their position in animal evolution and the integration of fossil data into analyses of animal

phylogeny A phylogenetic tree or phylogeny is a graphical representation which shows the evolutionary history between a set of species or Taxon, taxa during a specific time.Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, M ...

. As a

palaeontologist 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 ...

, he is also an authority on the

systematics Systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees (synonyms: phylogenetic trees, phylogenies). Phy ...

centipede Centipedes (from Neo-Latin , "hundred", and Latin , "foot") are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda (Ancient Greek , ''kheilos'', "lip", and Neo-Latin suffix , "foot", describing the forcipules) of the subphylum Myriapoda, ...

s – and a morphologist whose work contributes to the growth and methods of analysis of molecular datasets for inferring evolutionary relationships.

Education

Edgecombe was educated at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

where he received a PhD in 1991 for systematic studies on the trilobite order Phacopida supervised by Niles Eldredge at the American Museum of Natural History.

Career and research

After his PhD, Edgecombe was a

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

er at the University of Alberta, and worked as a researcher at the Australian Museum in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

for 14 years. In 2007, he took up the position of research leader at the

, where since 2013 he has been a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) merit researcher. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: With Gonzalo Giribet, he co-authored a textbook, ''The Invertebrate Tree of Life'', published by Princeton University Press in March 2020.

Awards and honours

Edgecombe was awarded the president's medal by the Palaeontological Association in 2011, and the Fenner Medal for distinguished research in biology by the Australian Academy of Science in 2004. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) in 2018. In 2024, a new megacheiran arthropod, ''Lomankus edgecombei'' was named after Edgecombe.

References

Living people Fellows of the Royal Society Year of birth missing (living people) Columbia University alumni Paleontologists Employees of the Natural History Museum, London Place of birth missing (living people) University of Alberta alumni {{paleontologist-stub