| RefNo | EC/1999/37 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Walker, Alan: certificate of election to the Royal Society |
| Date | 1995 |
| Description | Citation typed |
| Citation | Alan Walker is one of the world's foremost palaeo-anthropologists. He has made major discoveries of fossil primates (including an early robust australopithecine, the best preserved Homo erectus skeleton ever found, and a series of fossils of the early anthropoid Proconsul). He is best known for his innovative use of research on contemporary primates to reveal the behaviour and ecology of fossil species. His early work used studies of locomotion and anatomy in living prosimians to explore the locomotion of fossil species, laying the foundation for virtually all modern studies of primate locomotion. Subsequently, he used scanning electron microscopy to demonstrate that different food types leave characteristic microwear signatures on the teeth of contemporary and fossil mammals, establishing a quantitative database of microwear on modern primate species, to which data on fossil species can be compared in order to retrodict extinct species' diets. Walker's other important contributions include the use of engineering beam theory for ascertaining the relationship between the cross-sectional geometry of limb bones and the body weight of an individual and the estimation of life history parameters of fossil species from allometric relationships in contemporary species. He has been a consistent innovator who has played a major role in the development of modern palaeontology. |
| AccessStatus | Closed |
Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | PersonName | Dates |
| NA2368 | Walker; Alan (1938 - 2017) | 1938 - 2017 |