FALCONER MUSEUM - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Assistant - Surgeon With the British East India Company
• Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical Garden
• Superintendent of the Saharánpur

Falconer became Superintendent of the Saharánpur botanical garden, India from 1832-1842 during which time he became widely known for his study of fossil mammals in the Siwálik Hills. Perhaps most notably, he observed long periods of evolutionary stasis in these mammals with short periods of rapid evolutionary change throughout geological time. This research shows great foresight; Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould developed the same basic theory a century later, a theory known as punctuated equilibrium.