Throughout the past 18 years, the Osgood Lectureship has brought some very distinguished speakers to The College of Wooster. This year was no exception. On February 25, 1999, Dr. Bruce Latimer presented the Eighteenth Annual Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lectureship in Geology entitled "The Perils of Being Bipedal."

Bruce is the Curator and Head of the Department of Physical Anthropology and Assistant Director for Science at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He also is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Biological Anthropology Program in the Department of Anatomy at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Bruce did his undergraduate work at the University of Arizona. He has a Master's degree in Anthropology from Case Western Reserve University and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from Kent State University.

Bruce works primarily on the biomechanics of hominid skeletons, especially the limb bones. He has intensively studied fossil hominids, including post-cranial bones from eastern and southern Africa, Spain, and France. He has conducted research in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Siberia. The recipient of a number of awards and grants, Bruce received the Jared Potter Kirtland Award from The Cleveland Museum of Natural History in 1998 in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the field of natural science.

He is probably best known for his work on the evolutionarily important hominid "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis). He has made several crucial observations about the range of possible functions in the arm and leg bones of this species, all of which have implications for reconstructions of its life habits. Bruce's research has been published in numerous top anthropological and evolutionary journals. His other anthropological interests include bone mineral density in hominoids, the analysis of hominid footprints, australopithecine vertebral morphology, and the art and techniques of making accurate scientific casts of fossil bones.

Osgood Lecturers:

1982 John Pojeta, Jr. (United States Geological Survey)
1983 J. William Schopf (University of California, Los Angeles)
1984 David Jablonski (University of Chicago)
1985 Walter Manger ('66) (University of Arkansas)
1986 Susan Kidwell (University of Chicago)
1987 Niles Eldredge (American Museum of Natural History)
1988 Steven Stanley (Johns Hopkins University)
1989 Paul Taylor (The Natural History Museum, London)
1990 Erle Kauffman (University of Colorado)
1991 Rodney M. Feldmann (Kent State University)
1992 Molly F. Miller ('69) (Vanderbilt University)
1993 John Van Wagoner ('72) (Exxon Production Research Company)
1994 Adrienne Zihlman (University of California, Santa Cruz)
1995 Martin Lockley (University of Colorado at Denver)
1996 Timothy J. Palmer (University of Wales at Aberystwyth)
1997 Jeffrey F. Mount (University of California, Davis)
1998 Mary Droser (University of California, Riverside)
1999 Bruce Latimer (The Cleveland Museum of Natural History)

The Richard G. Osgood, Jr., Memorial Lectureship in Geology was endowed in 1981 by his three sons in memory of their father, an internationally-known paleontologist who taught at Wooster from 1967 until 1981. Funds from the endowment are used to bring a well-known geologist interested in paleontology and stratigraphy to the campus each year to lecture and meet with students.

Thursday, March 2, 2000, is the date of the Nineteenth Osgood Lecture. It will be presented by Paul Mayewski of the Climate Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

*******************************************************

Next

Back to Table of Contents