Professor Derek Briggs, a Geology Graduate receives Honorary Degree

December 2010

Professor Briggs, currently Director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and a graduate of Geology (1972) received an honarary degree on Friday afternoon (10th December).

The School of Natural Sciences presented a public lecture by Renowned Palaeontologist Professor Derek Briggs entitled ‘Extraordinary Fossils: Windows on the History of Life on Earth’ on the Friday afternoon.

A graduate of the College, Professor Derek Briggs had a distinguished career as a palaeontologist with positions in Cambridge, London, Bristol, Chicago and Yale before being appointed to this highly prestigious role in 2008. He is recognised internationally for his research on the preservation and evolutionary significance of exceptionally preserved fossils.  He is the author and editor of a number of books that have become benchmarks in Paleontology, including The Fossils of the Burgess Shale and Paleobiology – a Synthesis.

Briggs uses a range of approaches, from experimental work on the factors controlling decay, to studies of early mineralization and molecular preservation, to fieldwork on a range of extraordinary fossil occurrences. Briggs was one of three palaeontologists who were responsible for the now classical and critically acclaimed reinterpretation of the fossils of the Cambrian Burgess Shale. A major focus of his work continues to be the Cambrian explosion -- the first appearance as fossils of all the major animal groups over 500 million years ago. However, Briggs and his research team study a range of organisms from different geological periods. For example, tiny three-dimensional invertebrates recently reported from a volcanic ash of Silurian age (425-million-years-old) in Herefordshire, England, which he and colleagues are studying, include a sea spider, the free-swimming larval stages of a barnacle, a worm-like mollusk, a bristle worm and a starfish. A current project on 1- to 15-million-year-old leaves and insects involves investigating the alteration of biomolecules as they are incorporated into the fossil record en route to forming fossil fuels.

The Irish-born geologist has published several well-known books including ‘The Fossils of the Burgess Shale’ and two edited volumes: ‘Palaeobiology -- a synthesis’ (1990) and ‘Palaeobiology 2’ (2001), which have become benchmarks in paleontology. In addition, he has published numerous high-impact papers.

A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Briggs obtained his Ph.D. in 1976 from the University of Cambridge, where he worked on the fossils of the Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia. The Burgess Shale project was subsequently celebrated as a major contribution to evolutionary paleontology by Stephen J. Gould in his best-selling 1989 book ‘Wonderful Life’. After a period at the University of London, Briggs spent 17 years at the University of Bristol, where he was head of the Department of Earth Sciences from 1997 to 2001.

Following a year as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Briggs joined the Yale faculty in 2003 as a Professor of Geology and curator in charge of invertebrate paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He subsequently became Director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in 2008: a highly prestigious appointment. Briggs was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999, received the Lyell medal from the Geological Society of London in 2000, and the Boyle Medal from the Royal Dublin Society in 2001. He was president of the Palaeontological Society 2003-4 and elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2003.