John L. Carter, the retired curator of Invertebrate Paleontology, is world renown for his research on 350-million-year-old fossil brachiopods.
Carter named more than 130 new species and 40 new genera in his 27 years as curator, and his magnum opus was published in 2006 as part of the update to the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology H (Brachiopod revised).
Several brachiopods from his collection are on display in Benedum Hall of Geology. Included in the section’s outstanding brachiopod collection is the De Koninck brachiopods from Tournai and Vise’ Belgium.
Of all the living skeletonized metazoans, brachiopods have the longest and most complete geologic record.
