William & Mary Professor of Geology Rowan Lockwood has been elected president of the Paleontological Society, the largest international professional organization for paleontologists. The honor is likely a nod to her extensive body of research in the cutting-edge field of conservation paleobiology as well as her previous leadership roles within the society.

Lockwood’s presidency speaks to the excellence of the W&M Department of Geology. Her colleague, W&M Professor Christopher “Chuck” Bailey, is the acting president of the Geological Society of America. Thus, two of the department’s seven faculty members now serve as presidents of two of the largest geological societies – in addition to performing their duties as full-time instructors. Moreover, W&M alumna Lynn Wingard ’79 is currently serving as president of the Association of Women Geoscientists, another of geology’s wide-reaching international societies.

Bailey remarked that most of the W&M community knows Lockwood as “an amazing professor” who is greatly loved by students. In 2009, she received the university’s Jefferson Teaching Award. 

“What many folks don’t see is her leadership in the professional geoscience community that extends far beyond campus,” he said. “One of Rowan’s many talents is bringing people together to work collectively for the greater good, and her presidency of the Paleontological Society is a testament to those important skills.”

Like the fossil record, the history of the Paleontological Society’s membership shows evolution over time.

The Paleontological Society was established in 1908 and furthers the science of paleontology through annual meetings, conferences, grant funding and journal publication. Members hail from 40 countries and are professional paleontologists, academicians, science editors, earth-science teachers, museum specialists, undergraduate and graduate students, post doctoral scholars and avocational paleontologists. 

Each president serves a two-year term, and Lockwood is the seventh female president in the society’s 115-year history. She explained that when she became a paleontologist, approximately 6% of people in the field were female. Now, that number is closer to 33%.

“It was not an easy field to enter as a young woman,” she said, “and much of the reason I stayed was because of colleagues and friends that I made at the society.” 

Lockwood explained that when she was a graduate student, she would never have imagined that she would be recruited for the presidency.

“I’m thrilled, and I’m honored,” she said, “but it also makes me feel like I want to keep my head down and keep pushing to diversify the field, because we do have such a long way to go.”

She explained that diverse perspectives strengthen and expand knowledge within the field and that the Paleontological Society is working to recruit a more diverse population of paleontologists for the future.

“For example, the scientific community is starting to realize that there are lots of Indigenous communities that have so much knowledge about paleontology that, honestly, have been ignored and paved over by Western science,” she said. “It’s a really important time to be pushing the boundaries of what our science is and who practices that science.”

Lockwood’s own research focuses on a cutting-edge field of paleontology.

“Conservation paleobiology is the idea that the past can inform the present,” she said. “It helps us understand how organisms have responded to environmental pressures like global warming, ocean anoxia, acidification, even volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes. The fossil record is full of these repeated natural experiments.”

Lockwood co-authored a recent paper explaining how clues within the fossil record can be used to evaluate previous extinctions and contextualize current environmental challenges.

“I am fascinated by death and destruction,” she said, “I study how marine organisms in the past responded to pressures like global warming. I want to know who went extinct, who survived, who migrated to higher latitudes and which ones migrated to deeper depths. I’m really interested in trying to take that information and apply it to modern predictions of warming.”

Some past changes, she points out, are more impactful than others.

“If there’s anything that the fossil record shows us,” she said, “it’s that huge revolutions in biodiversity are possible. For example, in the end-Permian mass extinction, we lost 96% of species on land and in the oceans. If that happened today, life on the planet would be very different moving forward. The fossil record gives us glimpses into a mysterious world of the past and how different it is from today while helping us to better understand how we got here and what might happen in the future.”