Romer, Alfred Sherwood (1894–1973)

US palaeontologist and comparative anatomist who made influential studies of vertebrate evolution. His The Vertebrate Body (1949) is still a standard textbook today.

Romer was born in White Plains, New York, and studied at Amherst College and Columbia University. From 1934 he was professor of biology at Harvard; he also became director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 1946.

Romer spent almost all his career investigating vertebrate evolution. Using evidence from palaeontology, comparative anatomy, and embryology, he traced the basic structural and functional changes that took place during the evolution of fishes to primitive terrestrial vertebrates and from these to modern vertebrates. In these studies he emphasized the evolutionary significance of the relationship between the form and function of animals and the environment.