Robert L. Carroll

Robert L. Carroll

Robert Lynn Carroll (born May 5, 1938, Kalamazoo, Michigan) is a vertebrate paleontologist who specialises in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians and reptiles.

Carroll was an only child and grew up on a farm near Lansing, Michigan. He was introduced to paleontology by his father shortly after his fifth birthday, and by the time he was eight he had decided he wanted to be a vertebrate paleontologist. In that same year he received as a Christmas present the left femur of an Allosaurus, courtesy of Edwin H. Colbert, whom his father had told about his interest. In his teen years his parents took him on many fossil hunting trips to Wyoming and South Dakota. Allosaurus was discovered by Edwin Harris Colbert at the year 1942 in Wyoming.

After high-school, he went to Michigan State University, where he received a BSc in 1959, majoring in Geology. From there he went to Harvard University where he studied biology and paleontology under Alfred Sherwood Romer. His thesis dealt with the Dissorophidae, a group of Paleozoic amphibians are considered the closest relatives of present day amphibians.

After obtaining his Ph.D., he held a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Redpath Museum at McGill University in Montréal, and then at the Natural History Museum in London. During this time he studied tetrapod remains from the Pennsylvanian lycopod “tree stumps” at Joggins, Nova Scotia (a variety of temnospondyls, microsaurs, and basal amniotes). Most of this material was collected and first studied by Sir William Dawson, the first Principal of McGill University, in the nineteenth century.

Returning from London, in 1964 Carroll joined the permanent staff of McGill University as curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Redpath Museum. He was appointed Strathcona Professor of Zoology in 1987. From 1985 to 1991 he was director of the Redpath Museum.

Dr Carroll is the author or co-author of a large number of scientific papers on fossil vertebrates, as well as a number of important monographs, text-books and more general books. His areas of research include the origins of terrestrial vertebrates, the origin and early evolutionary radiation of amniotes, the origin and interrelationships of the Lissamphibian groups, the anatomy and relationship of Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians and reptiles, large scale patterns and processes of vertebrate evolution, and the use of Mesozoic marine reptiles as a model for investigating factors controlling the patterns and rates of evolution.

He currently lives in Montreal. He is married to Anna DiTuri, a retired business school teacher, and they have one child, David.