Jere H. Lipps
Encyclopedia
Dr. Jere Henry Lipps has been a professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the Department of Integrative Biology since 1988 and Curator of Paleontology at the UC Museum of Paleontology. Lipps is also a past director of the museum (1989–1997) and chair of the department (1991–1994). He served as president of the Paleontological Society
Paleontological Society
The Paleontological Society, formally the Paleontological Society of America, is an international organisation devoted to the promotion of paleontology. The Society was founded in 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland and was incorporated in April 1968 in the District of Columbia...

 in 1997, and the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research Inc. 1983-84 and 2001-2002. He has been elected a fellow of eight organizations and serves on the board of directors of Micropaleotology Project and the Cushman Foundation. He currently resides in Oakland, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

Early life

Lipps was born in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 at the Queen of Angels Hospital and grew up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock, California. As a boy Lipps roamed the hills in Los Angeles county near his boyhood home collecting interesting rocks and animals. Lipps attended Eagle Rock High School where he played American football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

, for the only undefeated team (1956) in the school's history.

Education

After graduating from Eagle Rock High School
Eagle Rock High School (Los Angeles, California)
Eagle Rock High School is a public school located in the neighborhood of Eagle Rock of northeast Los Angeles, California.Eagle Rock is the only combination junior and senior high school that serves grades 7 to 12 as part of the Los Angeles Unified School District.-History:The school first opened...

 he attended the University of California at Los Angeles, earning a B.A. in 1962 and a Ph.D. from UCLA in 1966. During this time, he became involved in paleontological research on the Southern California Channel Islands, collecting fossils and documenting the geology on five of the seven islands. His special interests were the Pleistocene history of California, the paleoecology of Miocene whale-bearing deposits in western North America, and planktonic foraminiferal evolution and biostratigraphy in California, the topic of his PhD dissertation. As a sideline, he did statistical analysis of the penis bones or baculum
Baculum
The baculum is a bone found in the penis of most mammals. It is absent in humans, but present in other primates, such as the gorilla and chimpanzee.The bone aids in sexual intercourse.-Purpose:...

 of the dire wolf
Dire Wolf
The Dire Wolf, Canis dirus, is an extinct carnivorous mammal of the genus Canis, and was most common in North America and South America from the Irvingtonian stage to the Rancholabrean stage of the Pleistocene epoch living 1.80 Ma – 10,000 years ago, existing for approximately .- Relationships...

, one of the most abundant fossils in the Rancho La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles.

Research

After receiving his Ph.D. Lipps moved to the University of California at Davis and began his career in the Department of Geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

. Lipps's research concerns the evolutionary biology and ecology of marine organisms, protists in particular. This involves studies of modern species and of particular problems in the fossil record. Presently, he is participating in studies concerning the biology and molecular phylogeny of coral reefs (Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

, Enewetak Atoll, French Polynesia
French Polynesia
French Polynesia is an overseas country of the French Republic . It is made up of several groups of Polynesian islands, the most famous island being Tahiti in the Society Islands group, which is also the most populous island and the seat of the capital of the territory...

) and California foraminifera
Foraminifera
The Foraminifera , or forams for short, are a large group of amoeboid protists which are among the commonest plankton species. They have reticulating pseudopods, fine strands of cytoplasm that branch and merge to form a dynamic net...

 with the aim of better understanding the fossil record of these forms and ecosystems. Paleobiologic projects include the evolution of the earliest shelled protists in the Precambrian
Precambrian
The Precambrian is the name which describes the large span of time in Earth's history before the current Phanerozoic Eon, and is a Supereon divided into several eons of the geologic time scale...

 and Cambrian
Cambrian
The Cambrian is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, lasting from Mya ; it is succeeded by the Ordovician. Its subdivisions, and indeed its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for Wales, where Britain's...

, the biologic constraints on mass extinctions and radiations, and the evolutionary history and future of reefs. These projects are mostly field oriented utilizing SCUBA
Scuba diving
Scuba diving is a form of underwater diving in which a diver uses a scuba set to breathe underwater....

 in the modern studies and extended geologic work in the paleobiologic studies.

Lipps was leader of a project on Antarctic marine ecology for the United States Antarctic Program
United States Antarctic Program
United States Antarctic Program is an organization of the United States government which has presence in the continent of Antarctica. It co-ordinates research and the operational support for research in the region...

 between 1971 and 1981. During that project Lipps took drilled core samples of the sea floor from beneath the ice. He and his team used dry suits to dive under the ice, frequently encountering aggressive leopard seal
Leopard Seal
The leopard seal , also referred to as the sea leopard, is the second largest species of seal in the Antarctic...

s. He was the leader of the biology team for the Ross Ice Shelf
Ross Ice Shelf
The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica . It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 km long, and between 15 and 50 metres high above the water surface...

 Project which drilled a hole through the 420m thick ice shelf and recovered organisms on the sea floor some 200m below the base of the Shelf at the southernmost marine locality in the world. As a result of this research, he has an island named for him in Antarctica called Lipps Island
Lipps Island
Lipps Island is a small rocky island west of Litchfield Island, off the southwest coast of Anvers Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula. Lipps Island is located at . Lipps Island was named by the United States Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for Dr. Jere H...

.

From 1985-1989, he worked in Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

 on coral reef
Coral reef
Coral reefs are underwater structures made from calcium carbonate secreted by corals. Coral reefs are colonies of tiny living animals found in marine waters that contain few nutrients. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, which in turn consist of polyps that cluster in groups. The polyps...

 ecology, supplementing many years of previous work on reefs elsewhere in the world. Since then his reef work involves localities in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, the Society Islands
Society Islands
The Society Islands are a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. They are politically part of French Polynesia. The archipelago is generally believed to have been named by Captain James Cook in honor of the Royal Society, the sponsor of the first British scientific survey of the islands;...

, the Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

ian Red Sea
Red Sea
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...

, Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...

, and other Pacific islands. His paleontological research involves fossil reefs, the Ediacaran biota in Russia, Australia, Newfoundland, and California, extinction dynamics in open-ocean ecosystems, and the paleontology of the Galapagos Islands
Galápagos Islands
The Galápagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part.The Galápagos Islands and its surrounding waters form an Ecuadorian province, a national park, and a...

 and sites in California.

Lipps is co-author (with Philip W. Signor) of the Signor-Lipps effect
Signor-Lipps effect
The Signor–Lipps effect is a paleontological principle proposed by Philip W. Signor and Jere H. Lipps which states that, since the fossil record of organisms is never complete, neither the first nor the last organism in a given taxon will be recorded as a fossil.One famous example is the...

, a paleontological principle which states that since the fossil record of organisms is never complete, because neither the first nor the last organism in a given taxon will be recorded as a fossil, hence the complete range in time and the rock record can never be known.

External links

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