R. J. G. Savage

Savage was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 2 July 1927 to an old family prominent in Ulster. He recalled a large rack of antlers of the extinct Irish elk mounted in the entrance hall of the family home, which colleague Michael Benton writes may have inspired Savage to pursue the study of fossil mammals. and earning a PhD in 1953 with a dissertation on the fossil otter Potamotherium. ==Academic career==

Savage was hired as assistant lecturer at Queen's University in 1952, before he had completed his PhD. He worked with geologist J. K. Charlesworth in expanding and moving the geology department to a new building. In 1954, Savage was hired as a lecturer and curator of the Geological Museum at the University of Bristol, where he remained for the rest of his career. He was reader in vertebrate palaeontology from 1966 to 1982, and a named professor in vertebrate palaeontology from 1982 until his retirement in 1992. Savage edited two volumes of the influential Vertebrates of Africa series with Louis Leakey, and was a colleague of Richard and Meave Leakey. His 1986 non-specialist book Mammal Evolution: An Illustrated Guide became a leading work in its field, and was translated into Spanish and Japanese. ==Personal life==

In 1969 Savage married Shirley C. Coryndon, a fellow palaeontologist and authority on fossil hippopotami. They had met in Kenya in 1955. Savage was known to colleagues as a good-natured raconteur, and "something of a raffish gentleman explorer". ==Books==

Fossil Vertebrates of Africa • • • Other works • • • ==References==