Palmer graduated from the
Pennsylvania State University in 1946. He received his Ph.D. in geology from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the
University of Minnesota in 1950. Palmer spent a year with the Bureau of Economic Geology in Texas before starting his doctoral project mentored by William Charles “Charlie” Bell. He also met and married Pat Richardson and changed his research interests to the western USA. The concept has been influential and has since been used widely in assessing shoreline geological deposits. Others have documented biomeres in other geographic and geological regions. From 1966 to 1980 he was professor of paleontology at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook. He was on the board of the Faculty of Geosciences from 1974 to 1977. In 1980, Palmer left Stony Brook to become the centennial science program coordinator for the Geological Society of America in Boulder, Colorado. He was also the coordinator of educational programs from 1988 to 1991. He retired from the Geological Society of America in 1993 to become an adjunct professor at the
University of Colorado at Boulder where he remained active in research. ==Awards and honors==