Farish A. Jenkins Jr (1940–2012) Palaeontologist, Anatomist, Explorer and Artist

COMMENT OBITUARY Farish A. Jenkins Jr (1940–2012) Palaeontologist, anatomist, explorer and artist.

ith a rifle strapped to his back nearly a century’s worth of speculation about a serendipitous expansion of his research each summer, a scalpel in his functional anatomy that had been based on programme to include other tetrapod hand each autumn and the eyes fossils alone. groups. In the 1990s and 2000s, Jenkins used Wof an artist throughout the year, Farish Jenkins’s research output was as systematic the same approach to open up the Triassic Jenkins Jr seamlessly blended expeditionary as his military training had been. During the rocks of Greenland and the Devonian palaeontology with experimental sediments of Arctic Canada to anatomy to establish how animals palaeontological discovery. He evolved to walk, run, jump and fly. uncovered haramiyids (some of the Jenkins, who died of com earliest mammals) in the Triassic plications from pneumonia on rocks and Tiktaalik (a genus of lobe- 11 November, was raised in Rye, finned fish) in the Devonian ones. New York. As a child, he showed Jenkins was president of the no obvious draw towards a life of Society of Vertebrate Paleontology science and exploration. But two in 1981–82, and he received its experiences transformed him. While Romer-Simpson Medal for life S. KREITER/BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY VIA GETTY GLOBE S. KREITER/BOSTON studying philosophy at Princeton time achievement in 2009. He will University in New Jersey in the early be remembered by generations 1960s, Jenkins spent a summer as an of undergraduates, graduate and undergraduate assistant to Glenn medical students and assistant Lowell Jepsen. Jepsen ran a legendary professors at Harvard College and field programme in Wyoming, the Harvard–MIT Health Sciences digging up mammalian fossils, and and Technology Training Program Jenkins caught the bug for for the humanity and compassion expeditionary palaeontology. After with which he supported their university he enlisted in the US Marine Corps, 1970s, he published a succession of cogent careers. Among his many awards, he was where he acquired the stamina, determin analyses of the key joints of the mammalian especially proud to receive a Harvard ation and confidence to execute the fieldwork body and their role in major functional tran College Professorship for his role in under that became a hallmark of his success. sitions of evolution. Indeed, the 1970s were graduate teaching. In 1964, Jenkins began a PhD at Yale heady times to be at the MCZ. A menagerie of The showmanship of Farish’s Harvard University in New Haven, Connecticut. creatures walked, hopped and crawled under lectures was legendary. To demonstrate Working with A. W. Crompton, the newly the cine X-ray beam. Students and colleagues gaits he would recite Herman Melville while appointed director of the Yale Peabody came from around the world with fresh ques limping like Captain Ahab; at other times, he Museum, Jenkins discovered an interest in tions. All the while, Jenkins was developing would don a body stocking with a skeleton early mammals and their closest relatives. the palaeontological expeditionary approach painted on it. His dissertation on the postcranial anatomy that led to his greatest breakthroughs. He cut a dashing figure — whether bearing of these animals was a landmark study. Farish Jenkins’s recipe for successful a pocket watch, pressed white shirt and tie clip It showed how careful anatomical observa expeditions went thus: identify a crucial in the laboratory, or a miner’s pick and fire tion and three-dimensional analysis of joint question, explore the rocks most likely to arm (to protect himself and others from polar articulations could reveal major steps in the contain the fossils you need to answer it and bears) in the field. As well as an anatomist, evolution of locomotion. add stubborn persistence to the mix. palaeontologist and explorer, he was an artist. In 1971, Jenkins was recruited by To better understand the evolutionary It was not unusual for him to arrive for class Crompton to a post at Harvard University’s origins of mammals, Jenkins began his four hours early to draw three-dimensional Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) search in the Cretaceous rocks of Montana, anatomical diagrams on the blackboard. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where where he found early mammal fossils. From Indeed, his scientific papers typically Crompton had assumed directorship. Here, 1977 to 1983 he launched a series of expedi contained renderings that took months to the two launched a now famous labora tions to the Jurassic Kayenta Formation of execute. If you wrote a paper with Farish, tory. They employed electromyography, a Arizona. Others had famously found fossils you finished images and art before penning technique for recording the electrical activity in these rocks, but Jenkins brought a novel a single word. ■ produced by muscles, along with a then-new approach: if the goal was to understand cineradiographic device for creating movies mammalian origins, and the earliest repre Neil Shubin is Robert R. Bensley from successive X-ray images. Crompton, sentatives were small, then the search should Distinguished Service Professor at the Jenkins and their students revealed how be focused on those sediments most likely to University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois the movement of bones in animals ranging hold the smallest fossils. 60637, USA. He collaborated with Jenkins from lizards and shrews to frogs is coupled The result was stunning. His excavation of on expeditions to Arizona, Greenland, to the activity of their muscles as they eat and siltstones uncovered not just early mammals, Morocco, Namibia, Argentina, China and move about. Armed with this new empirical but also salamanders, frogs and a group of Ellesmere Island during the past 30 years. evidence, Jenkins and his colleagues revised amphibians called caecilians — prompting e-mail: [email protected]