Derek Briggs facts for kids

Derek Ernest Gilmor Briggs, born on January 10, 1950, is a famous Irish palaeontologist. A palaeontologist studies ancient life, like fossils. He is also a taphonomist, which means he studies how living things become fossils.

Professor Briggs works at Yale University in the United States. He is well-known for his important work on the Burgess Shale fossils. He helped change how scientists understood these amazing ancient creatures.

He worked with two other palaeontologists, Harry Blackmore Whittington and Simon Conway Morris. Together, they made big discoveries about the Burgess Shale. Professor Briggs is currently a special professor of Geology and Geophysics at Yale. He also used to be the Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale.

Becoming a Scientist

Derek Briggs studied Geology at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. He earned his first degree in 1972. After that, he went to the University of Cambridge in England.

There, he worked with the famous British palaeontologist Harry Blackmore Whittington. In 1976, Derek Briggs earned his PhD degree. His research was about ancient creatures called arthropods found in the Burgess Shale.

Discovering Ancient Life

While at the University of Cambridge, Derek Briggs focused on the fossils from the Burgess Shale. This special place is in British Columbia, Canada. The fossils there are incredibly well-preserved.

He worked with another student, Simon Conway Morris, under Harry Whittington's guidance. Their work on the Burgess Shale became one of the most important projects in palaeontology in the late 1900s.

Professor Briggs's research looks at how fossils are preserved. This is called taphonomy. He studies very special fossil sites called Konservat-Lagerstätten. These sites have fossils that even show soft body parts, not just bones or shells.

His work includes experiments to understand how things decay and turn into fossils. He also studies how minerals and organic materials help preserve fossils. He does field work at many different fossil sites around the world.

From 2008 to 2014, Professor Briggs was the Director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Since 2011, he has been a special professor at Yale, teaching about Earth and planetary sciences.

Awards and Recognition

Derek Briggs has received many important awards for his work. These awards show how much his discoveries have helped science.

• 1999 – He became a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a very high honor for scientists in the UK.
• 2000 – He received the Lyell Medal from the Geological Society of London.
• 2001 – He was awarded the Boyle Medal by the Royal Dublin Society.
• 2003 – He became an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy.
• 2006–2008 – He was the President of the Paleontological Society.
• 2015 – He received the Paleontological Society Medal.
• 2019 – He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• 2019 – He received the Lapworth Medal from the Palaeontological Association.

When he was nominated for the Royal Society, they said his work was amazing. They noted his discoveries of incredibly well-preserved fossils. His research helped scientists understand the Cambrian explosion. This was a time when many new types of animals appeared on Earth.

He showed that the variety of shapes among living arthropods today is similar to what existed in the Cambrian period. This means that the basic rules for how bodies develop were already in place very early in evolution. He also found the first evidence of soft tissues from conodonts. This helped solve a big mystery about what these ancient creatures were. It showed that conodonts were the earliest known vertebrates (animals with backbones).

More recently, he has explored new ways to study how soft parts of animals become fossils. His studies have shown how soft tissues can be copied perfectly by minerals. This is sometimes called the "Medusa effect."