Robert L. Carroll
| Robert Lynn Carroll | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 5, 1938 Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States |
| Residence | Montreal |
| Fields | Paleontology |
| Institutions | McGill University |
| Alma mater | |
| Doctoral students | Philip J. Currie |
Robert Lynn Carroll FRSC (born May 5, 1938) 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 that are often considered the closest relatives of present day amphibians, although they may also be stem-tetrapods.
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.
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