Mark McMenamin
| Mark McMenamin | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1957/1958 (age 58–59) |
| Residence | South Hadley, Massachusetts |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Fields | Paleontology, Geology |
| Institutions | Mount Holyoke College |
| Alma mater |
University of California, Santa Barbara, Ph.D. Stanford University, B.S. |
| Known for | Ediacaran fossils; Hypersea theory; Proterozoic supercontinent Rodinia |
| Notable awards |
Presidential Young Investigator Award Sigma Xi National Lecturer 2011 Irish Education 100 Award |
| Spouse | Dianna L. Schulte McMenamin |
Mark A. S. McMenamin is an American paleontologist and professor of geology at Mount Holyoke College. He has contributed to the study of the Cambrian explosion and the Ediacaran biota. McMenamin has articulated novel solutions to challenging problems associated with study of the history of life and the history of geographic exploration.
He is the author of several books, most recently The Garden of Ediacara: Discovering the Earliest Complex Life one of the only popular accounts of research on the Ediacaran biota, and Science 101: Geology. He is credited with co-naming several geological formations in Mexico, describing several new fossil genera and species, and naming the Precambrian supercontinent Rodinia. The Cambrian archeocyathid species Markocyathus clementensis was named in his honor in 1989.
McMenamin was born in Oregon, earned his B.S. at Stanford University in 1979 and his PhD at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1984. In 1980, while at Santa Barbara he met his future wife, Dianna, also a paleontology graduate student, with whom he would co-author several publications. He joined the staff at Mount Holyoke College in 1984.
In 1995 McMenamin led a field expedition to Sonora, Mexico, that discovered fossils (585 million years old) which McMenamin argued belonged to a diverse community of early animals and Ediacaran biota. The paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America where it was reviewed by Ediacaran expert James G. Gehling. In 2011, McMenamin reported the discovery of the oldest known adult animal fossils, Proterozoic chitons from the Clemente Formation, northwestern Sonora, Mexico. This discovery has not yet been published in a scientific journal following peer review. These fossils McMenamin argued were associated with the earliest animal trace fossils, the first known arthropod tracks, and the earliest evidence in the fossil record for a predation event. The latter interpretation has not been widely accepted by other paleontologists. Further up in this same stratigraphic sequence, McMenamin also discovered and named the early shelly fossil Sinotubulites cienegensis, a fossil that allowed the first confident Proterozoic biostratigraphic correlation between Asia and the Americas. In Lower Cambrian strata higher in the stratigraphic sequence, McMenamin also discovered important stem group brachiopods belonging to the genus Mickwitzia. During a Mount Holyoke College field trip to Death Valley, California, McMenamin and his co-authors found evidence indicating that the Proterozoic shelly fossil Qinella survived the Proterozoic-Cambrian boundary.
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