Instructor

About

  • Role:

    Faculty
  • Position:

    • Instructor
  • Concentration:

    • Vertebrate Paleontology
  • Department:

    • Anthropology and Geography
  • Education:

    • Ph.D. in Vertebrate Paleontology and Sedimentrsity, Ameology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, 1977 B.S. in Geology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, 1968

Biography

Dr. Thomas Bown received his Bachelor of Science in Geology at Iowa State University in 1968 and his Ph.D. in Vertebrate Paleontology and Sedimentology at the University of Wyoming in 1977. He was the Research Geologist in charge of the Vertebrate Paleontology of the Central Region, U.S., at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, CO from 1977-1995,and has since been a consulting geologist working in the western U.S., East Africa, Egypt and the Middle East, and Argentina. Dr. Bown has published more than 240 refereed papers on stratigraphic correlations of Eocene and Oligocene rocks and vertebrate faunas, debris-avalanches, groundwater occurrences, fossil primate systematics and evolution, Eocene mammal systematics and evolution, sedimentology, Tertiary paleosols, taphonomy, geoarchaeology, and paleoichnology.

Research

The stratigraphic correlation of Eocene fossil vertebrate localities in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming; stratigraphic correlation, paleoenvironments, and taphonomy of fossil primate localities in upper Eocene and lower Oligocene deposits of the Fayum Depression, Egypt; the morphology, distribution and correlation of dry stone, crescent-shaped tombs and cattle-kraals of Neolithic cattle pasturalists in the west-central Sahara Desert.

Courses

  • ANTH470, Field Paleontology Course

    ANTH 470 is a summer field course at the Paleontology Field School in which Kim Nichols, Dr. Tom Bown, and their undergraduate students survey for new fossil-bearing localities dating to 55-53 mya in the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming AND collect the fossils! After two field seasons, the field course lab now holds over 800 mammalian fossil specimens — nearly 100 of which are extinct Primates!