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Romer, Alfred Sherwood (1922)
Portrait of Alfred Sherwood Romer at age 28 (photo: 1922)
Alfred Sherwood Romer (1894-1973) was an American paleontologist who became an widely-followed authority on vertebrate evolution. Romer taught at the University of Chicago from 1923-1934 and at Harvard from 1934 onward. In 1946, he became director of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Focusing on the evolution of early vertebrates, a primary interest was the evolution of tetrapods. In this regard, he reorganised the classification of labyrinthodonts (early amphibians, whose "labyrinthodont" teeth had complex infolding of enamel and dentine layers).
Through his textbook Vertebrate Paleontology, which went through several editions from 1933-1966, Romer laid the foundation for the traditional classification of vertebrates. Comparing evidence from paleontology, comparative anatomy, and embryology, he taught the basic structural and functional changes occurring in the evolution of fishes to primitive terrestrial vertebrates, and from these to all other tetrapods. In his teachings, Romer organized the widely scattered taxonomy of many different vertebrate groups and combined them in a simplified scheme, adhering to an approach known as as evolutionary systematics. Notably, Romer distinguished diapsids and anapsids (both reptiles) from synapsids (which include therapsids), the latter deviating from reptiles and ancestral to mammals.
This
viewpoint, representing an attempt to synthesize Darwinian theories and
new fossil findings with the Linnean system, began with late 19th
century anatomists such as T.H. Huxley and Ernst Haeckl. A similar
approach continued in the "new synthesis" of Darwinian theory with
genetics in the 1920s-60s, as shown by the zoologist Ernst Mayr (1944),
and paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson (1961). Romer's approach to
evolutionary systematics has more recently been practiced by various
paleontologists, including R.L. Carroll (1988) and Michael Benton
(2004).
Evolutionary systematics links ancestral or
evolutionary relationships with the stratigraphic sequence in the
fossil record, with paleontology playing an important role in providing
criteria for organizing the interpretations of fossil taxa. The
emphasis on stratigraphy links evolutionary systematics with the
original "bedrock" concept of sequential interpretation used in
geology and paleontology. Emphasis is placed on understanding more
general levels of classification such as orders or classes, such as
Placoderms (early armored fishes) and lobe-finned fishes, which are
considered to be basal or stem groups from which later groups radiated.
The methodology involves correlating horizontal or contemporary
groupings of taxa with changes in their anatomy and environments over
time, as seen in stratigraphic contexts. This approach of
evolutionary sytematics often contrasts with that of cladistics, which
relies on defining taxonomic relationships through a computerized
comparison of many traits or characters, often disregarding
stratigraphic evidence of the actual fossil.
References:
Benton, M.J. 2004. Vertebrate Paleontology. Blackwell Publishers. xii–452
Carroll, R. L. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution, WH Freeman & Co.
Mayr, E. 1942. Systematics and the origin of species from the viewpoint of a zoologist. Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Romer, A.S. 1933. Vertebrate Paleontology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. (2nd ed. 1945; 3rd ed. 1966)
Romer, A.S. 1933. Man and the Vertebrates. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. (2nd ed. 1937; 3rd ed. 1941; 4th ed., retitled The Vertebrate Story, 1949)
Romer, A.S. 1956. Osteology of the Reptiles. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Romer, A.S. 1968. Notes and Comments on Vertebrate Paleontology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Simpson, G. G. 1961. Principles of animal taxonomy. Columbia University Press, New York.
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