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 Lance Grande, PhD
Geology Department
Curator, Fossil Fishes and
Vice President for Collections and Research
Lance Grande has dual training as a biologist and a geologist. He studies the comparative osteology (structure and function of bones), ontogeny (developmental history), and biogeography (geographic distribution through time) of fossil and living fishes. His work has a particular emphasis on the ray-finned fishes, the Actinopterygii, a group containing half of all known vertebrate animals.
Grande is also interested in the philosophy and application of methods used to interpret evolution and Earth’s history. Some of the fish groups Grande has done major studies on include the Siluriformes (catfishes), Clupemorpha (herring and herring-like fishes), Osteoglossomorpha (bony-tongues), and other more primitive actinopterygian groups such as sturgeons, paddlefishes, amiiforms, gars, and bichirs.
Grande is also especially interested in the origin and evolution of the modern North American freshwater fishes, as well as in developing new techniques for preparing fish fossils so their skeletons can be better exposed for detailed comparisons with living fishes.
Every year Grande conducts fieldwork in the famous Green River Formation in southwestern Wyoming, where he works in some of the world’s most productive fossil beds. This uniquely rich fossil bonanza includes a beautifully preserved, extinct, 50-million-year-old tropical lake community containing millions of beautifully preserved fossil organisms.
Dr. Lance Grande Interview
“It is an honor to oversee the largest, most diverse fossil fish collection in North America, containing more than 30,000 specimens from single fish skeletons to large slabs of rock with more than two hundred individual fish.”
“As a biologist, I also work with living fishes. In addition to our huge fossil fish collection in the Geology Department, The Field Museum has the good fortune of having over 2 million recent fishes in the Zoology Department, and of being located next to the Shedd Aquarium, with all its wonderful resources. There is no better place in the world to study the evolution and biodiversity of fishes than The Field Museum.”
 To learn more about what life was like in the Tertiary Period, and to see more amazing fossils from the Green River formation, take a look at the Dr. Lance Grande Video created for the Evolving Planet exhibition.
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Continue to Dr. Olivier Rieppel. >>
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