Professor Daniel C. Fisher completed undergraduate and graduate
work in Geological Sciences at Harvard University (PhD, 1975)
and was appointed in the Department of Geological Sciences at
the University of Rochester. In 1979, he moved to the University
of Michigan’s Department of Geological Sciences and Museum of
Paleontology, where he is now the Claude W. Hibbard Collegiate
Professor and Curator of Paleontology. Shortly after arriving in
Ann Arbor, Professor Fisher was called to several local sites
where remains of mastodons had turned up during excavation of
farm ponds. Evidence at some of these sites suggested that
humans had been involved in postmortem carcass processing
(butchery), and thus began a long-term interest in whether human
activity was a significant causal factor in the extinction of
mastodons and mammoths. Intrigued by evidence that some of these
sites had been used for underwater meat storage, Professor
Fisher put himself in the place of a Pleistocene human. He
tested the feasibility of unde