Paleontology

Lucas’s scientific career began with research on Paleocene–Eocene mammals, particularly from the San Juan Basin, New Mexico. Field research by Lucas and his collaborators in the San Juan Basin during the last 35 years resulted in the collection of thousands of Late Cretaceous, Paleocene, and Eocene vertebrate fossils and led to major revisions of the lithostratigraphy and correlation of the Upper Cretaceous–Eocene strata in this region. Diverse research by Lucas on Paleocene–Eocene mammals resulted in major contributions to the taxonomy, evolution, and biostratigraphy of several groups, including condylarths, pantodonts, uintatheres, pyrotheres, taeniodonts, tillodonts, entelodonts, brontotheres, and rhinocerotoids.

Beginning in the 1980s, Lucas worked extensively on nonmarine Triassic stratigraphy and biostratigraphy, especially in the western United States. In the 1990s, this became the basis for developing a global Triassic timescale based on tetrapod evolution that provides a framework for ordering and correlating tetrapod evolution during the Triassic. Lucas has also developed a similar tetrapod-based timescale for the Permian Period, and made diverse contributions to Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Cenozoic vertebrate biostratigraphy and biochronology.

Lucas also worked on diverse aspects of Triassic biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, and correlation in North America, Europe, Asia, and South America. He has been a Voting Member of the Subcommission on Triassic Stratigraphy (International Commission on Stratigraphy) since 1992. He has been a corresponding member of both the Permian and the Carboniferous Subcommissions for about a decade.

Beginning in 1985, Lucas took an active role in the New Mexico Geological Society (to which he was elected an Honorary Member in 1994). He served as managing editor of the New Mexico Geological Society Guidebooks from 1987 through 1991, co-organized 11 field conferences of the society, and contributed extensively to its guidebooks and other publications.

Lucas also worked extensively to develop a fossil collection at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. The Museum now boasts a collection of more than 70,000 catalogued fossils, including world-class collections of nonmarine Triassic, Cretaceous, Paleocene, and Eocene vertebrates, as well as the largest and most significant Permian footprint collection.

As an exhibit curator, Lucas has been responsible for most of the scientific content of the three Mesozoic exhibit halls at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science: “Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Triassic New Mexico,” “Jurassic: Age of Super Giants,” and “Cretaceous: New Mexico’s Seacoast.”

In 1991, Lucas launched the new journal Bulletin of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science to publish research on natural history, especially related to New Mexico. As of 2015, 67 separate bulletins have been published in this series, mostly on paleontology, with contributions from hundreds of scientists worldwide.

Lucas’s research on fossils has included original contributions to many groups, including palynomorphs, charophytes, late Paleozoic–Mesozoic megafloras, conodonts, fusulinids, brachiopods, mollusks (especially Triassic and Cretaceous ammonites), fishes, and many different kinds of amphibians, reptiles, and mammals. His recent research objectives have focused on Upper Paleozoic stratigraphy and biostratigraphy, particularly the placement and correlation of the Carboniferous–Permian boundary.

Ongoing projects in New Mexico include studies on Pliocene (2–5 million years old) vertebrates from the Rio Grande Valley south of Las Cruces in Doña Ana County and in the Gila River Valley north of Lordsburg in Hidalgo County; extinct free-tailed bats from medial Pleistocene (200,000 years old) cave deposits in Slaughter Canyon Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park; and fossil vertebrates associated with Paleoindian artifacts from late Pleistocene deposits (11,000–12,000 years old) in Sandia Cave in the Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque. Other current projects outside of New Mexico include work on complete late Quaternary (5,000–10,000 years old) skeletons of giant land tortoises, crocodiles, and extinct birds from submerged sinkholes on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas; early Miocene (15 million years old) rhinos, horses, oreodonts, turtles, and crocodiles from recent excavations along the Panama Canal in Panama; Pleistocene mammals (500,000 years old) from Sonora in northwestern Mexico; and Oligocene and Miocene (20–30 million years old) bats from Florida and Nebraska.

His research largely focuses on fossil ecosystems and the animals and plants that were a part of them. He has often focused on particular groups, including dinosaurs, turtles, and carnivorous mammals, with a specific concentration on the Mesozoic ecosystems in the southwestern United States, and New Mexico in particular. His lab works on more than just taxonomy and systematics, also including biomechanics, paleoecology, behavior, ontogeny and development, and macroevolutonary trends, as well as biostratigraphy and biogeography. They often look to interweave their work through multiple disciplines, helping investigate complex issues, as well as doing the taxonomic and morphologic work that creates the foundation for many studies in paleontology and evolutionary biology.