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Presentation of the 2015 Paleontological Society Medal to Derek E. G. Briggs

Derek Briggs is probably best known to the general public for his work on the Burgess Shale, which he carried out as a Ph.D. student and afterwards, together with Harry Whittington and Simon Conway Morris. Their research was popularized by Stephen J. Gould. The importance of the Cambrian Explosion that Harry, Derek, and Simon highlighted, aided by Steve Gould’s book, cannot be overstated. Many students, including myself, read Wonderful Life and became interested in evolution, paleontology, and the events that shaped the origins of life. While Harry and Simon stole more of the limelight with their many weird wonders, Derek produced a series of monographs on bivalved arthropods. A particular piece of a great evolutionary puzzle also fell to Derek—the problematic Anomalocaris . At that stage it was speculated that what we now know was a segmented grasping appendage might be the tail of the large bivalved arthropod Tuzoia . Derek rejected the idea and later, in 1985, Harry Whittington and Derek demonstrated that the Anomalocaris appendage is situated on the front end of a large nektonic organism with flaps down the side of its body and a circular mouth …