Ross MacPhee, Ph.D.
Curator, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History , New York

Tel: 212-769-5480
Email: macphee@amnh.org

Dr. Ross D. E. MacPhee is a curator in the Division of Vertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. MacPhee's work focuses on extinction, in particular the extinction of mammalian species allegedly caused, or indirectly accelerated, by human behavior within the last 40,000 years. Most recently, Ross' work has revolved around the possibility that the extinction of large mammals at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (approximately 11,000 years ago) was caused by diseases introduced through contact with humans or their commensals, the organisms that depend on them or interact with them.

Ross graduated with a Ph.D. in Physical Anthropology from the University of Alberta , Canada , in 1977. In 1981 he took up a teaching position at Duke University and continued his research. He became a curator at the Museum in 1988. In addition, he is an adjunct senior scientist in the CERC program at Columbia University and an associate professor at the State University of New York at Stonybrook , New York . Ross is currently series editor of Advances in Vertebrate Paleobiology, a continuing series of books on different subject areas in paleontology.

Dr. MacPhee continues to research the causes of megafauna extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. He proposed the hypothesis that the first peoples that entered the Americas inadvertently imported pathogens that the native species had no immunity against. These pathogens managed to infect new hosts, thereby causing terrible plagues and enormous mortality. According to his argument, in many cases the mortality was so great that extinction ensued. Ross refers to such newly emergent diseases as "hyperdiseases."

Dr. MacPhee is also interested in historical biogeography, or the geographical distribution of different species over time. This area of his research focuses in particular on the colonization of islands, specifically the Greater Antilles , by mammal species. Ross hypothesizes that mammals were able to colonize these islands because they once formed part of a land span that connected North and South America . He has been successful in finding appropriate fossils that provide the evidence he needs to support this hypothesis.

Selected Publications

MacPhee, R.D.E., and Flemming, C., 1999. Requiem aeternum: the last five hundred years of mammalian species extinctions. In MacPhee, R. D. E. (ed.), Extinctions in Near Time: Causes, Contexts, and Consequences , pp. 333-372. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers: New York .

MacPhee, R.D.E., and Flemming, C., 1997. Brown-eyed, milk-giving and Extinct: Losing mammals since AD 1500. Natural History 106(3): 84-88.

MacPhee, R.D.E., and Marx, P.A. 1997. The 40,000 -year plague: humans, hyper-disease, and first-contact extinctions. In S. M. Goodman and B. D. Patterson (eds.), Natural Change and Human Impact in Madagascar , pp. 169-217. Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington , DC .

Iturralde-Vinent, M.A., and MacPhee, R.D.E. 1996. Age and Paleogeography of Dominican Amber. Science 273:1850-1852.

MacPhee, R.D.E., and Burney, D.A. 1991. Dating of modified femora of extinct dwarf Hippopotamus from southern Madagascar : implications for constraining human colonization and vertebrate extinction events. Journal of Archaeological Science 18: 695-706.

MacPhee, R.D.E., and Grimaldi, D.A. 1996. Mammal bones in Dominican amber. Nature 380: 489-490.