Peter Sheehan

  • Emeritus Adjunct Professor

Education

Ph.D., Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley 1971
M.A., Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley1967

Professional Experience

2000- : Robert and Sally Manegold Distinguished Curatorial Chair, Milwaukee Public Museum
1977- : Curator III, IV, V, Milwaukee Public Museum
1977- : Adjunct Professor, Geosciences, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
1973-1977: Adjoint de Recherche, Département de géologie, Université de Montréal
1972-1973: Lecturer, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario
1971-1972: U.S. National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Lund, Sweden

Research Interests

I am particularly interested in the constraints on evolution imposed by synecologic association of animals and the environment. My research is focused on the community ecology and zoogeography of Ordovician and Silurian brachiopods. I am working on extinction events at the end of the Ordovician and the subsequent faunal radiation in the Silurian and on the Ordovician Radiation. As a sidelight I am examining the extinction of dinosaurs. Current projects include:

  • Faunal change at the Ordovician extincition
  • a comparison of sequence stratigraphic patterns and faunal changes during the Ordovician and Silurian in the Great Basin and Estonia
  • microbial mat expansion associated with loss of fauna after the Ordovician extinction
  • the extinction of dinosaurs and 5) changes in patterns of sedimentation in western North America resulting from faunal and floral changes following the K/T asteroid impact.

Professional Affiliations

Geological Society of America (Fellow)
Paleontological Society
Palaeontological Association
Geological Association of Canada (Fellow)
International Paleontological Association
Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Wisconsin Earth Science Teachers Association
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (Fellow)

UWM Land Acknowledgement: We acknowledge in Milwaukee that we are on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee homeland along the southwest shores of Michigami, North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida and Mohican nations remain present.   |   To learn more, visit the Electa Quinney Institute website.