astronomy

Gregory Edgecombe

Gregory Edgecombe is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Gregory Edgecombe rather than just read about it. In short: Gregory Donald Edgecombe is a paleontologist who is a merit researcher in the department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, London. He is a leading figure in understanding the evolution of arthropods, their position in animal evolution and the integration of fossil data into analyses of animal phylogeny.

Key takeaways

Gregory Edgecombe belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Gregory Edgecombe to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Gregory Edgecombe from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Gregory Donald Edgecombe is a paleontologist who is a merit researcher in the department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, London. He is a leading figure in understanding the evolution of arthropods, their position in animal evolution and the integration of fossil data into analyses of animal phylogeny. As a palaeontologist, he is also an authority on the systematics of centipedes – and a morphologist whose work contributes to the growth and methods of analysis of molecular datasets for inferring evolutionary relationships.

Education Edgecombe was educated at Columbia University where he received a PhD in 1991 for systematic studies on the trilobite order Phacopida supervised by Niles Eldredge at the American Museum of Natural History.

Career and research After his PhD, Edgecombe was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alberta, and worked as a researcher at the Australian Museum in Sydney for 14 years. In 2007, he took up the position of research leader at the Natural History Museum, London, where since 2013 he has been a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) merit researcher. With Gonzalo Giribet, he co-authored a textbook, The Invertebrate Tree of Life, published by Princeton University Press in March 2020. His research program has broadly addressed the fossil record of Euarthropoda, with an emphasis on Paleozoic taxa, such as trilobites, stem-group euarthropods, and stem-groups of the modern subphyla. He has also contributed extensively to the phylogeny of centipedes. One of the important contributions of his career was the identification of euthycarcinoids as the marine sister taxon of Myriapoda.

Awards and honours Edgecombe was awarded the president's medal by the Palaeontological Association in 2011, and the Fenner Medal for distinguished research in biology by the Australian Academy of Science in 2004. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018. In 2024, a new megacheiran arthropod, Lomankus edgecombei was named after Edgecombe.

References

This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Gregory Edgecombe

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Gregory Edgecombe claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Gregory Edgecombe before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Gregory Edgecombe ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Gregory Edgecombe

In research: Gregory Edgecombe appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Gregory Edgecombe in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Gregory Edgecombe is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Columbia University alumni, Employees of the Natural History Museum, London, Fellows of the Royal Society, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Gregory Edgecombe outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Gregory Edgecombe in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Gregory Edgecombe means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Gregory Edgecombe out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Gregory Edgecombe in simple terms?

Why does Gregory Edgecombe matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Gregory Edgecombe?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Gregory Edgecombe.