Dr. William B. Gallagher received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990 where his doctoral dissertation investigated the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary and its associated mass extinction event. Bill currently holds the rank of Adjunct Assistant Professor and was, until his retirement in 2008, the Assistant Curator of Natural History, Collections and Exhibits, Natural History Bureau, New Jersey State Museum. He also was a GEMS Visiting Assistant Professor for the 2008-2009 academic year, a Â鶹Íø Science and Technology Advanced Research Institute (STARI) Fellow from 2009 until 2011, and a full-time Visiting Assistant Professor from 2011 until 2014. Bill has traveled the world during the course of his field studies on dinosaurs and other vertebrate species, including stops in Argentina, China, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Iran, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and Switzerland, as well as much of eastern North America and most of the American west. Bill has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses at numerous other institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, Drexel University, Richard Stockton College, and Kean University, and has authored over 70 scientific papers, articles, and abstracts, as well as the popular book, When Dinosaurs Roamed New Jersey. His current research interests include the paleoecological dynamics of mass extinction events, especially the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/P) Boundary mass extinction event, which coincided with the disappearance of the dinosaurs.
Primary Teaching Responsibilities
- Marine Life Through Time
- Marine Vertebrates: Fish to Mammals
- Mesozoic Ruling Reptiles
Selected Publication Titles and Sources
- Greensand Mosasaurs of New Jersey and the K/T biotic transition of marine vertebrates. Fourth Triennial International Mosasaur Meeting.
- Comparative taphonomy of Late Cretaceous vertebrate fossil occurrences in the Atlantic Coastal Plain deposits of Appalachia: Testing the hypothesis of mass mortality at the K/Pg Boundary. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
- On the last mosasaurs: Late Maastrichtian mosasaurs and the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary in New Jersey. Bulletin de Societe Geologique du France.
- Relationship between mass extinction and iridium across the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary in New Jersey. Geology.
- When Dinosaurs Roamed New Jersey. Rutgers University Press.
- A new Mosasaur specimen from Maastricht (the Netherlands), with a review of the Late Cretaeous-Early Paleogene marine faunas of New Jersey and Limburg. The Mosasaur.
- Faunal changes across the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary in the Atlantic coastal plain of New Jersey: Restructuring the marine community after the K-T mass-extinction event. Geological Society of America Special Paper 356.