Lance Grande

Lance Grande
Born (1951-02-16) February 16, 1951 (age 73)
Academic background
EducationBS Geology, 1976; MS Geology/Zoology, 1979; PhD Evolutionary Biology, 1983
Doctoral advisorGareth Nelson
Donn Rosen

Roger Lansing Grande (born February 16, 1951), more commonly known as Lance Grande, is an evolutionary biologist and curatorial scientist. His research and work is focused on Paleontology, Ichthyology, Systematics and Evolution.[1] He is well known for his work on the paleontology of the Green River Formation[2][3] and for his detailed monographs on the comparative anatomy and evolution of ray-finned fishes.[4][5] He has also published books on broader issues, engaging larger audiences on the importance of the natural and the social sciences.[6][7]

Grande has won the PROSE award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence from the Association of American Publishers twice, for his books Gems and Gemstones and The Lost World of Fossil Lake.[8][9] In 2012, he won the Robert H. Gibbs, Jr. Memorial Award from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists "for an Outstanding Body of Published Work in Systematic Biology."[10] In 2013, he was appointed as the Field Museum of Natural History's first Distinguished Service Curator, after serving eight and a half years as head of the museum's Collections and Research division and museum Senior Vice President. In 2018, he received the Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Grande received numerous research grants from National Science Foundation, Negaunee Foundation and Tawani Foundation.[11][12] He named over 70 new species and higher taxa, publishing over 150 scientific books, monographs, and shorter papers.[13] By 2024, seven different species had been named in his honor by various authors in scientific articles, including one Ordovician crinoid species,[14] four Eocene bird species,[15][16][17][18] and two Cretaceous fish species[19][20]

  1. ^ "Lance Grande - The Negaunee Distinguished Service Curator".
  2. ^ Grande, L. 1984. Paleontology of the Green River Formation, with a review of the Fish Fauna. Second Edition. Bulletin 63, The Geological Survey of Wyoming. 334 pages.
  3. ^ "The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time by Lance Grande". 16 May 2013.
  4. ^ Grande, L. and W. E. Bemis, 1998. A comprehensive phylogenetic study of amiid fishes (Amiidae) based on comparative skeletal anatomy. An empirical search for interconnected patterns of natural history. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir 4, pp. 1-690.
  5. ^ Grande, L. 2010. An empirical synthetic pattern study of gars and closely related species (Lepisosteiformes) based mostly on skeletal anatomy: The resurrection of Holostei. American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, Special Publication 7: 1-874.
  6. ^ Grande, L. 2017. Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums. University of Chicago Press.
  7. ^ Grande, L. 2024. The Evolution of Religions. A History of Related Traditions. Columbia University Press.
  8. ^ "Lance Grande's The Lost World of Fossil Lake".
  9. ^ "Prose Award Winners".
  10. ^ "Robert H. Gibbs, Jr. Memorial Award for Excellence in Systematic Ichthyology". Archived from the original on 2017-07-09. Retrieved 2018-01-16.
  11. ^ Grande, L. 2017. Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums. ISBN 978-0-226-19275-8.
  12. ^ "CURATORS: BEHIND THE SCENES OF NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS WITH LANCE GRANDE".
  13. ^ "Google Scholar".
  14. ^ Brower, J. 1995. Eoparisocrinid crinoids from the Middle Ordovician (Galena Group) of northern Iowa and southern Minnesota. Journal of Paleontology 69(2):351-366.
  15. ^ Nesbite, S. and J. Clark. 2016. The anatomy and taxonomy of the exquisitely preserved Green River Formation (early Eocene) lithornids (Aves) and the relationships of Lithornithidae. American Museum of Natural History, Bulletin 406.
  16. ^ Smith, N., A. Debee, and J. Clark. 2018. Systematics and phylogeny of the Zygodactylidae (Aves, Neognathidae) with description of a new species from the early Eocene of Wyoming. USA PeerJ. 2018:6:e4950.
  17. ^ Musser, G. and J. Clark. 2020 An Exceptionally Preserved Specimen from the Green River Formation Elicidates Complex Phenotypic Evolutionary Gruiformes and Charadriformes. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Vol. 8, article 559929.
  18. ^ Musser, Grace; Clarke, Julia A. (2024-07-30). Smith, Thierry (ed.). "A new Paleogene fossil and a new dataset for waterfowl (Aves: Anseriformes) clarify phylogeny, ecological evolution, and avian evolution at the K-Pg Boundary". PLOS One. 19 (7): e0278737. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0278737. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 11288464. PMID 39078833.
  19. ^ Brownstein, C. and T. Lyson. 2022. Giant Gar from directly above the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary suggests healthy freshwater ecosystems existed within thousands of years of the asteroid impoact. Biology Letters 18(6)
  20. ^ Cooper, S., et al. 2023. A new fully marine, short snouted lepisosteid gar from the Upper Cretaceous (Turonian) of North Africa. Cretaceous Research 151.