Alan H. Cheetham is a paleobiologist and retired senior scientist and curator of invertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian Institution"s National Museum of Natural History.
Background
Born in El Paso, Texas, January 30, 1928, Cheetham grew up in Taos, New Mexico, received Bachelor of Surgery (New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, 1950) and Master of Surgery (Louisiana State University, 1952) degrees in geology, and, under the guidance of Norman D. Newell, obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in paleontology from Columbia University in 1959.
Education
Columbia University; Louisiana State University.
Career
He retired from the Smithsonian in 2001 and resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Much of his research includes testing evolutionary models in the fossil record, particularly the theory of punctuated equilibrium. His research is focused on the systematics and morphometrics of late Mesozoic and Cenozoic bryozoans found in deposits located in the Caribbean, especially the Dominican Republic, Panama, Costa Rica, and Venezuela, and the Gulf coast of the United States, particularly Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi.
He has also worked extensively on Cenozoic bryozoans in England and southern Scandinavia and was a contributor to the Deep Sea Drilling Project on Cenozoic bryozoans recovered from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Membership
Until joining the Smithsonian in 1966, Cheetham was a member of the geology faculty at Louisiana State University. During his tenure there, he was also a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Natural History Museum in London (1961) and a guest professor at the University of Stockholm, Sweden (1964).