Ernest L Lundelius
Retirement has given me the time for a number of projects that were deferred for a number of years.
Research:
1) I am working on three projects in Australia. One on a Pliocene fauna from Victoria which is well dated at about 4.4 million years by a capping basalt flow which makes it one of the best dated faunas in Australia. It has a diverse rain forest fauna. Another is a study of a 37,000-year sequence of faunas from a cave on the Nullarbor Plain. This area is currently a desert area but the fauna older that about 10,000 years indicates more moist conditions. The third is an assemblage from fissure fills on Barrow Island off the north west coast of Australia. This is currently about the only record from that part of the continent.
2) Another project with Russell Graham of the Denver Museum of Natural History, is updating and extending FAUNMAP, a database of North American mammals. The first version only covered the last 40,000 years and the coterminous United States. This update will cover the last 5 million years and include Alaska and Canada. This will be used to investigate changes in the mammalian fauna of North America such as provinciality, environmental patchiness etc. over a longer period of time than was possible for the earlier studies.
3) There are several Pleistocene assemblages from the Edwards Plateau that need study.
Areas of Expertise
Vertebrate Paleontology. Research interests are Pleistocene and Holocene mammals with emphasis on paleo-environmental reconstructions and microevolutionary changes. Analysis of nonhuman skeletal material from archaeological sites. Application of quantitative techniques to paleontological problems.
Research Locations
- Fulbright Fellowship to Western Australia, 1954-1955, studying Pleistocene and post-Pleistocene vertebrate faunas.
- National Science Foundation Grant, 1960-1961, for study of Pleistocene vertebrates from Brazos River terraces.
- National Science Foundation Grant, 1963-1968, for field/laboratory work on Australian fossil mammals.
- Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, National Science Foundation Grant, Research Assignment, University Research Institute (July-December, 1976), for work in Australia on fossil mammals.
- National Science Foundation Grant, 1980-1983, Dissertation Improvement Grant for Melissa Winans.
- Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research for Sleshi Tebedge for work in Ethiopia.
- National Science Foundation Grant, 1983-1985, Grant for paleontological work in Ethiopia.
- National Science Foundation Grant, 1986-1989, for enhancement of management of vertebrate fossil resources at the Texas Memorial Museum.
- National Science Foundation Grant, 1991-1994, management enhancement for fossil vertebrate resources at the Texas Memorial Museum, Phase 2.
- Earthwatch Grant, Summer 1991, Late Pleistocene/Holocene Climatic History of the Edwards Plateau, Texas
- National Science Foundation Grant, 1990-1993, for compilation of data base of Quaternary mammals (with R. W. Graham as co-PI).
- Texas Academy of Science, Distinguished Scientist of the Year (2008).