John Russell Foster (born November 3, 1966) is an American

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 ...

. Foster has worked with

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...

remains from the Late Jurassic of the

Colorado Plateau The Colorado Plateau is a physiographic and desert region of the Intermontane Plateaus, roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States. This plateau covers an area of 336,700 km2 (130,000 mi2) within w ...

and

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in great-circle distance, straight-line distance from the northernmost part of Western Can ...

, Foster is also working on Cambrian age trilobite faunas in the southwest region of the American west. He named the crocodyliform

trace fossil A trace fossil, also called an ichnofossil (; ), is a fossil record of biological activity by lifeforms, but not the preserved remains of the organism itself. Trace fossils contrast with body fossils, which are the fossilized remains of part ...

'' Hatcherichnus sanjuanensis'' in 1997 and identified the first known occurrence of the theropod trace fossil '' Hispanosauropus'' in North America in 2015.

Career

* Born November 3, 1966, San Diego, California. * High School, Los Gatos High School, Los Gatos, California. 1985 * A.B. Geology,

Occidental College Occidental College (informally Oxy) is a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1887 as a coeducational college by clergy and members of the Presbyterian Church, it became non-sectarian in 1910. It is ...

, Los Angeles, California. 1989 * M.S. Paleontology,

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology The South Dakota School of Mines & Technology (South Dakota Mines, SD Mines, or SDSM&T) is a public university in Rapid City, South Dakota. It is governed by the South Dakota Board of Regents and was founded in 1885. South Dakota Mines offers b ...

, Rapid City, South Dakota. 1993 * Ph.D.

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver, and the U ...

, Boulder, Colorado. 1998 He is adjunct faculty of

geology Geology (). is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth ...

Colorado Mesa University Colorado Mesa University (CMU or Mesa) is a public university in Grand Junction, Colorado, United States. Originally established in 1925 as Grand Junction Junior College, the school was renamed to Mesa College in 1940. The college began offerin ...

, Grand Junction,

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

. From 2014 to 2018 he was the Director of the Museum of Moab. He served for thirteen years as Curator of Paleontology at the Museums of Western Colorado from 2001 to 2014. He is currently a curator at the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum in Vernal, Utah.

Professional work

An expert on the

Late Jurassic The Late Jurassic is the third Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time scale, geologic time from 161.5 ± 1.0 to 143.1 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic stratum, strata.Owen ...

, he has spent more than twenty-five years excavating fossils across the western United States, authoring and coauthoring more than 55 professional papers, ranging from Triassic to Cretaceous, with a few Cambrian and Cenozoic studies appearing as well. In addition to dinosaurs, he has spent over a decade working in the

Cambrian The Cambrian ( ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 51.95 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran period 538.8 Ma (million years ago) to the beginning of the Ordov ...

shales of the western United States.

Triassic

In December 2017, he and coauthors Xavier A. Jenkins of Arizona State University and Robert J. Gay of Colorado Canyons Association formally published their study on the oldest known dinosaur from Utah, a neotheropod that is likely an animal similar to ''

Coelophysis ''Coelophysis'' ( Traditional English pronunciation of Latin, traditionally; or , as heard more commonly in recent decades) is a genus of coelophysid Theropoda, theropod dinosaur that lived Approximation, approximately 215 to 201.4 million y ...

''.

Jurassic

His researches in the Late Jurassic of the

and Rocky Mountains includes the geographic and environmental distributions of microvertebrates and

s. He served as the lead researcher at the Mygatt-Moore Quarry in western Colorado for 14 years, and continues to work in the Late Jurassic of eastern Utah and western Colorado. His current work includes the excavation of the first known dinosaur from the western United States, " Dystrophaeus," on

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...

lands in San Juan County,

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

. Foster had a ceratosaurid

ceratosaur Ceratosaurs are members of the clade Ceratosauria, a group of dinosaurs defined as all theropods sharing a more recent common ancestor with ''Ceratosaurus'' than with birds. The oldest known ceratosaur, ''Saltriovenator'', dates to the earliest ...

theropod dinosaur, '' Fosterovenator,'' named after him in 2014

Cambrian

His researches in the Cambrian of the

Great Basin The Great Basin () is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets to the ocean, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja Californi ...

and

, includes the study of

taphonomy Taphonomy is the study of how organisms decay and become fossilized or preserved in the paleontological record. The term ''taphonomy'' (from Greek language, Greek , 'burial' and , 'law') was introduced to paleontology in 1940 by Soviet scientis ...

and

biostratinomy Biostratinomy is the study of the processes that take place after an organism dies but before its final burial. It is considered to be a subsection of the science of taphonomy, along with necrology (the study of the death of an organism) and diag ...

trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three-lobed entities") are extinction, extinct marine arthropods that form the class (biology), class Trilobita. One of the earliest groups of arthropods to appear in the fossil record, trilobites were among the most succ ...

s, and what this information indicates about the paleoenvironmental conditions on the shallow shelf of western North American during the early

Paleozoic The Paleozoic ( , , ; or Palaeozoic) Era is the first of three Era (geology), geological eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. Beginning 538.8 million years ago (Ma), it succeeds the Neoproterozoic (the last era of the Proterozoic Eon) and ends 251.9 Ma a ...

Popular books

Foster is the author of '' Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World'', followed by his second book '' Cambrian Ocean World''.

References

Bibliography

*Lockley, M. G., Gierlinski, G., Matthews, N. A., Xing, L., Foster, J. R., and Cart, K. 2017. New dinosaur track occurrences from the Upper Jurassic Salt Wash Member (Morrison Formation) of southeastern Utah: Implications for thyreophoran trackmaker distribution and diversity. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 470:116–121. * Foster, J. R., and Peterson, J. E. 2016. First report of Apatosaurus (Diplodocidae: Apatosaurinae) from the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry in the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Utah: Abundance, distribution, paleoecology, and taphonomy of an endemic North American sauropod clade. Palaeoworld 25:431–443. * Foster, J. R., and Gaines, R. R. 2016. Taphonomy and paleoecology of the “Middle” Cambrian (Series 3) formations in Utah's West Desert: Recent finds and new data. Utah Geological Association Publication 45:291–336. * Foster, J. R., McHugh, J. B., Peterson, J. E., and Leschin, M. F. 2016. Major bonebeds in mudrocks of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), northern Colorado Plateau of Utah and Colorado. Geology of the Intermountain West 3:33–66. * D’Emic, M. D., and Foster, J. R. 2016. The oldest Cretaceous North American sauropod dinosaur. Historical Biology 28:470–478. * Hunt-Foster, R. K., Lockley, M. G., Milner, A. R. C., Foster, J. R., Matthews, N. A., Breithaupt, B. H., and Smith, J. A. 2016. Tracking dinosaurs in BLM Canyon Country, Utah. Geology of the Intermountain West 3:67– 100. * Foster, J. R. 2015. Theropod dinosaur ichnogenus Hispanosauropus identified from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), western North America. Ichnos 22:183–191. * Foster, J. R., and Hunt-Foster, R. K. 2015. First report of a giant neosuchian (Crocodyliformes) in the Williams Fork Formation (Upper Cretaceous: Campanian) of Colorado. Cretaceous Research 55:66–73. * Foster, J. R., Trujillo, K. C., Frost, F., and Mims, A. L. 2015. Summary of vertebrate fossils from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) at Curecanti National Recreation Area, central Colorado. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 67:77–84. * Foster, J. R. 2014. Cambrian Ocean World: Ancient Sea Life of North America. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 416 p. * Foster, J. R., and Wedel, M. J. 2014. Haplocanthosaurus (Saurischia: Sauropoda) from the lower Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) near Snowmass, Colorado. Volumina Jurassica 12(2):197–210. * Woodruff, D. C., and Foster, J. R. 2014. The fragile legacy of Amphicoelias fragillimus (Dinosauria: Sauropoda; Morrison Formation – latest Jurassic). Volumina Jurassica 12(2):211–220. * Trujillo, K. C., Foster, J. R., Hunt-Foster, R. K., and Chamberlain, K. R. 2014. A U/Pb age for the Mygatt-Moore Quarry, Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation, Mesa County, Colorado. Volumina Jurassica 12(2):107–114. * Lockley, M. G., Buckley, L. G., Foster, J. R., Kirkland, J. I., and Deblieux, D. D. 2014. First report of bird tracks (Aquatilavipes) from the Cedar Mountain Formation (Lower Cretaceous), eastern Utah. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 420:150–162. * Lockley, M. G., Hunt-Foster, R. K., Foster, J. R., Cart, K., and Gerwe, D. S. 2014. Early Jurassic track assemblages from the Granite Creek area of eastern Utah. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 62:205–210. * Foster, J. R. 2013. Ecological segregation of the Late Jurassic stegosaurian and iguanodontian dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation in North America: pronounced or subtle? PalArch's Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology 10(3):1–11. * Foster, J. R. 2011. Trilobite taphonomy of the Latham Shale (Lower Cambrian; Dyeran), Mojave Desert, California: an inner detrital belt Burgess Shale-type deposit of western Laurentia. In Johnston, P. A., and Johnston, K. J., eds., International Conference on the Cambrian Explosion, Proceedings, Palaeontographica Canadiana 31:119–140. * Foster, J. R. 2011. Bonnima sp. (Trilobita; Corynexochida) from the Chambless Limestone (Lower Cambrian) of the Marble Mountains, California: first Dorypygidae in a cratonic region of the southern Cordillera. PaleoBios 30:45–49. * Foster, J. R. 2011. Trilobites and other fauna from two quarries in the Bright Angel Shale (Middle Cambrian, Series 3; Delamaran), Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. In Hollingsworth, J. S., Sundberg, F. A., and Foster, J. R., eds., Cambrian Stratigraphy and Paleontology of Northern Arizona and Southern Nevada: The 16th Field Conference of the Cambrian Stage Subdivision Working Group, International Subcommission on Cambrian Stratigraphy, Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin 67:99–120. * Foster, J. R. 2011. Trilobite taphonomy in the lower Pioche Formation (Dyeran; Global Stage 4) at Frenchman Mountain, Nevada. In Hollingsworth, J. S., Sundberg, F. A., and Foster, J. R., eds., Cambrian Stratigraphy and Paleontology of Northern Arizona and Southern Nevada: The 16th Field Conference of the Cambrian Stage Subdivision Working Group, International Subcommission on Cambrian Stratigraphy, Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin 67:282–283. * Foster, J. R., and Heckert, A. B. 2011. Ichthyoliths and other microvertebrate remains from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of northeastern Wyoming: a screen-washed sample indicates a significant aquatic component to the fauna. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 305:264–279. * Foster, J. R., and Hunt-Foster, R. K. 2011. New occurrences of dinosaur skin of two types (Sauropoda? and Dinosauria indet.) from the Late Jurassic of North America (Mygatt-Moore Quarry, Morrison Formation). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 31:717–721. * Lockley, M. G., and Foster, J. R. 2010. An assemblage of probable crocodylian traces and associated dinosaur tracks from the lower Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of eastern Utah. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 51:93–97. * Farlow, J. O., Coroian, I. D., and Foster, J. R. 2010. Giants on the landscape: modeling the abundance of megaherbivorous dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation (Late Jurassic, western USA). Historical Biology 22:403–429. * Foster, J. R. 2009. Preliminary body mass estimates for mammalian genera of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic, North America). PaleoBios 28:114–122. * Foster, J. R. 2009. Taphonomic characteristics of a quarry in the Bright Angel Shale (Middle Cambrian), Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona: a preliminary look. In Baltzer, E., ed., American Institute of Professional Geologists, Conference Proceedings, Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau: Canyons, Resources, and Hazards, p. 77–80. * Foster, J. R., and Chure, D. J. 2006. Hindlimb allometry in the Late Jurassic theropod dinosaur Allosaurus, with comments on its abundance and distribution. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 36:119–122.

External links

John Foster.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foster, John Living people 1966 births American paleontologists