Description: (Paleontologist)
David M. Raup was a distinguished paleontologist from the University of Chicago who specialized in the analysis of the fossil record and biodiversity on Earth. His research, in collaboration with colleague Jack Sepkoski, significantly advanced the understanding of extinction events. They proposed a theory suggesting that the extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago was part of a cyclic pattern of mass extinctions occurring every 26 million years. Raup's contributions have had a lasting influence on the field of paleontology.