biography
| name: |
Schopf, J(ames) William
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1941– )
|
| biography:
| Palaeontologist, born in Urbana, Illinois, USA. A Harvard PhD, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (1968), where he became professor of palaeobiology. He was NASA's principal investigator of lunar samples (1969–74). A specialist on the origin of life, Precambrian palaeobiology, palaeobotany, and fossil and modern micro-organisms, he announced in 1980 the discovery in Australia of 3·5 billion-year-old fossil organisms, a find that pushed back the age of life on earth by 1·2 billion years. |
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