Derek Briggs

Irish paleontologist and taphonomist

Derek Ernest Gilmor Briggs (born 10 January 1950) is an Irish palaeontologist and taphonomist based at Yale University.

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. Briggs's research is on the taphonomy, or preservation, and evolutionary significance of the exceptionally preserved fossil biotas known as Konservat Lagerstätten – fossil formations that include evidence of faunal soft tissue. His work involves a range of approaches from experimental work on the factors controlling decay and fossilisation, through studies of early diagenetic mineralisation and organic preservation, to field work on a range of fossil occurrences. Date Position 1974–1977 Postdoctoral research Fellow, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge 1977–1985 Department of Geology, Goldsmiths College, University of London 1985–2002 Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol (Chair 1997–2001) 2001–2002 Visiting professor, Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago 2003– Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics and Curator in charge of Invertebrate Paleontology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University 2004–2007 Director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies 2008–2014 Director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University 2011– G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University