Russell Coope, also Geoffrey Russell Coope and G. Russell Coope (1930 Cheshire, UK – 2011) was a

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ...

paleoentomologist and neontologist and a paleoclimatologist specializing in the British Pleistocene. He was an expert and leader in the reconstruction of Quaternary paleoenvironmental conditions from fossil beetles. The relatively young age of his fossils allowed Coope to explore construction sites for fossils, in addition to geological field sites. Coope was an Honorary Professor of Quaternary Science and staff member at the University of Birmingham from 1955 to 1993. After retiring he continued working in his home laboratory and at

Royal Holloway, University of London Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL), formally incorporated as Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, is a public research university and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It has six schools, 21 academic departm ...

. Coope turned to beetles as a researcher subject while searching for fossil corals in Pleistocene sediments revealed in a sand quarry being worked in the

Chelford Sands Chelford is a village and civil parish in Cheshire, England, near to the junction of the A537 and A535 roads six miles (10 km) west of Macclesfield and six miles south-east of Knutsford, and is part of the Tatton constituency. The civil p ...

. Many of the beetles he found were from sites around Upton Warren in Worcestershire, and he used these to show that past climate change had been rapid, data that were later confirmed by Greenland ice cores. '' Quaternary International'' in 2014 published an issued composed mostly of papers given in his honour in June 2012 at Royal Holloway.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coope, Russell Academics of the University of Birmingham 1930 births 2011 deaths British palaeontologists