Richard Swann Lull

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Lull was born in Annapolis, Maryland, the son of naval officer Edward Phelps Lull and Elizabeth Burton, daughter of General Henry Burton. He married Clara Coles Boggs, and he has a daughter, Dorothy. He majored in zoology at Rutgers College, where he received both his undergraduate and master's degrees (M.S. 1896). He worked for the Division of Entomology of the United States Department of Agriculture but in 1894 became an assistant professor of zoology at the State Agricultural College in Amherst, Massachusetts (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst). Lull's interest in fossil footprints began at Amherst College, renowned for its collection of fossil footprints, and eventually led him to switch from entomology to paleontology.

In 1899, Lull worked as a member of the American Museum of Natural History's expedition to Bone Cabin Quarry, Wyoming, helping to collect that museum's brontosaur skeleton. In 1902 he again joined an American Museum team in Montana, then studied under Columbia University professor Henry Fairfield Osborn. In 1903 he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and in 1906, after a brief time at Amherst, he was named assistant professor of Vertebrate Paleontology in Yale College and Associate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. He stayed at Yale for the next 50 years. In 1933, Lull was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.{{cite web|title=Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal |url=http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_elliot |publisher=National Academy of Sciences |accessdate=16 February 2011 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120801121352/http://nas.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_elliot |archivedate=August 1, 2012 }}

One famous example he used to support his non-Darwinian evolution theory concerned the enormous antlers of the Irish elk: he argued that these could not possibly be the result of natural selection, and instead reflected one of his "unlocked genetic drives" toward ever-increasing antler size. The poor elk, coping in each generation with ever-bigger antlers were eventually driven extinct.{{cite book |last=Gould |first=Stephen Jay |author-link=Stephen Jay Gould |year=1977 |url=http://www.wou.edu/~snyderj/Biology%20101%20-%20Ecology,%20Evolution,%20and%20Diversity/Articles/Gould%20-%20The%20Misnamed%20Mistreated%20and%20Misunderstood%20Irish%20Elk.pdf |chapter=The Misnamed, Mistreated, and Misunderstood Irish Elk |pages=79–90 |title=Ever Since Darwin |publisher=W.W. Norton |location=New York}} His evolutionary theory was a form of orthogenesis.{{cite book |last=Bowler |first=Peter J. |author-link=Peter J. Bowler |year=1992 |title=The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900 |publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press |location=Baltimore |page=171 |isbn=978-0801843914}}

His book Organic Evolution (1917) received positive reviews and was described as an "excellent summary of the theories, facts, and factors of evolution."Anonymous. (1917). Organic Evolution by Richard Swann Lull. Transactions of the American Microscopical Society 36 (4) 281-282.S. W. W. (1918). Organic Evolution, a Text-Book by Richard Swann Lull. The Journal of Geology 26 (3): 285-286.

File:TIMEMagazine1Jun1925.jpg cover, 1 Jun 1925]]

• [https://archive.org/details/fossilswhattheyt031633mbp Fossils: What They Tell Us of Plants and Animals of the Past] (1931)
• A Revision of the Ceratopsia or Horned Dinosaurs (1933)
• The Ways of Life (1925)
• [https://archive.org/details/organicevolutio01lullgoog Organic Evolution] (1917)
• [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001995641 Fossil Footprints of the Jura-Trias of North America] (1904)

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• [http://www.yale.edu/peabody/archives/ypmbios/lull.html Yale History and Archives: Richard Swann Lull]

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• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Richard Swann Lull}}
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Category:1867 births

Category:1957 deaths

Category:American paleontologists

Category:Non-Darwinian evolution

Category:People from Annapolis, Maryland

Category:University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty

Category:Columbia University alumni

Category:Yale University alumni

Category:Yale Sterling Professors