Derek Briggs
| Derek Briggs | |
|---|---|
| Born | Derek Ernest Gilmor Briggs 10 January 1950 Ireland |
| Residence | New Haven, Connecticut, United States |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Fields | Paleontology |
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| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | Arthropods from the Burgess Shale, Middle Cambrian, Canada (1976) |
| Doctoral advisor | Harry Whittington |
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Derek Ernest Gilmor Briggs (born 10 January 1950) is an Irish palaeontologist and taphonomist based at Yale University. Briggs is one of three palaeontologists, along with Harry Blackmore Whittington and Simon Conway Morris, who were key in the reinterpretation of the fossils of the Burgess Shale. He is the Yale University G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Geology and Geophysics; former Director, Peabody Museum of Natural History; and presently Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Briggs was educated at Trinity College Dublin where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geology in 1972. He went on to the University of Cambridge to work under British palaeontologist Harry Blackmore Whittington. He was awarded a PhD in 1976 on Arthropods from the Burgess Shale, Middle Cambrian, Canada.
While at the University of Cambridge, Briggs worked on the fossils of the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia alongside a fellow student Simon Conway Morris, both under the supervision of Harry Whittington, on the exceptionally well-preserved Burgess Shale fauna. The Burgess Shale project subsequently became one of the most celebrated endeavours in the field of palaeontology in the latter half of the 20th century. On 1 July 2008 he took over as Director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He became the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Geology and Geophysics at Yale in 2011.
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