Richard Aldridge

Infobox_Scientist
name = Richard Aldridge


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residence = England flagicon|England
nationality = British flagicon|UK
field = Palaeontology
work_institution = University of Leicester
alma_mater = University of Southampton
doctoral_advisor = Ronald Leyshon Austin
doctoral_students = Howard Armstrong, M. Paul Smith, Giles Miller, Stuart Sutherland, Sarah Gabbott, Philip Donoghue
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prizes = Pander Medal of the Pander Society and President-Elect of the Palaeontological Association
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Richard Aldridge is a British palaeontologist, Bennett Professor of geology at the University of Leicester.

Aldridge's career began at Southampton University before moving to a temporary lectureship at University College London and then to Nottingham University where he remained until 1989 when, during the Oxburgh Review of Earth Sciences, he moved to his current institution, the University of Leicester, where he served two terms as Head of Department. Aldridge's research has been focused primarily on the conodont biostratigraphy Aldridge, R. J. 1972. Llandovery conodonts from the Welsh Borderland. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History), "Geology" 22: 125-231] Aldridge, R. J. 1975. The stratigraphic distribution of conodonts in the British Silurian. "Journal of the Geological Society, London" 131: 607-618 ] and palaeobiology and one of his seminal contributions has been to uncover the vertebrate nature of the long-enigmatic conodont animal, principally in collaboration with Derek Briggs and Euan Clarkson. This was achieved through careful analysis of skeletal remains, but also through analysis of rare soft tissue remains of conodonts Briggs, D. E. G., Clarkson, E. N. K. and Aldridge, R. J. 1983. The conodont animal. Lethaia 16: 1-14 ] Aldridge, R. J., Briggs, D. E. G., Smith, M. P., Clarkson, E. N. K. and Clark, N. D. L. 1993. The anatomy of conodonts. "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B" 340: 405-421] Donoghue, P. C. J., Forey, P. L. and Aldridge, R. J. 2000. Conodont affinity and chordate phylogeny. "Biological Reviews" 75: 191-251] . This led naturally to Aldridge's current research focus which is fossil Lagerstätten Hou, X. G., Aldridge, R. J., Bergström, J., Siveter, D. J., Siveter, D. J. and Feng, X. H. 2004. "The Cambrian fossils of Chengjiang, China: the flowering of animal life". Blackwell Science Ltd, London] . Aldridge was awarded the Pander Medal of the Pander society in 2006. He is currently President-Elect of the Palaeontological Association, assuming the office of President at the Annual Meeting of the Association in Glasgow in December 2008.

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