Erik Jarvik

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Anders Erik Vilhelm Jarvik (30 November 1907 – January 11, 1998) was a Swedish palaeozoologist who worked extensively on the sarcopterygian (or lobe-finned) fish Eusthenopteron. In a career that spanned some 60 years, Jarvik produced some of the most detailed anatomical work on this fish, making it arguably the best known fossil vertebrates.

Jarvik was born at a farm in Utby in Västergötland, and matriculated in 1927 at Uppsala University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1942 with the dissertation On the structure of the snout of Crossopterygians and lower Gnathostomes in general. He participated in the Greenland expedition of Professor Gunnar Säve-Söderbergh in 1932 and was appointed assistant in the Department of Palaeozoology of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm in 1937; he eventually succeeded Erik Stensiö as professor and head of the department in 1960, retiring in 1972.

1 Research
2 Selected Publications
- 2.1 Books
3 External links

[edit] Research

Jarvik's research concerned mainly the sarcopterygian fishes. His main interests were in the so-called "rhipidistian" sarcopterygian fishes, which he held to be divided into two croups: the Osteolepiformes and the Porolepiformes. The distinction between these two groups became the basis for Jarvik's hypothesis on the diphyletic origin of tetrapods. Jarvik held, on the basis of detailed anatomical comparisons of the snout and nasal capsule structures, that urodeles (salamanders) were descended directly from porolepiform fishes, while all other tetrapods were descended from osteolepiforms, in fact even directly from Eusthenopteron. This view is not held by vertebrate paleontologists today.

[edit] Selected Publications

[edit] Books

Théories de l'évolution des vertébrés reconsidérées à la lumière des récentes découvertes sur les vertébrés inférieurs. Masson, Paris. 1960.
Basic Structure and Evolution of Vertebrates, 2 Vols. Academic Press, London. 1980