David William Steadman is the curator of ornithology at the Florida Museum of Natural History

Florida Museum of Natural History

The Florida Museum of Natural History is the State of Florida's official state-sponsored and chartered natural history museum. Its main facilities are located on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida....

 at the University of Florida

University of Florida

The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...

.

His research has concentrated on the evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

, biogeography

Biogeography

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species , organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities vary in a highly regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, isolation and habitat area...

, conservation

Conservation biology

Conservation biology is the scientific study of the nature and status of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction...

, and extinction

Extinction

In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...

 of tropical birds, particularly in the islands of the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

. He has also authored over 180 scientific publications. He has conducted a number of digs at prehistoric sites and uncovered widescale extinctions caused by humans in the early stages of colonisation. He has described a number of extinct species of birds and more recently was involved in discovering that the Solomon Islands Frogmouth

Solomon Islands Frogmouth

The Solomons Frogmouth , also known as the Cinnamon Frogmouth or Solomon Islands Frogmouth, is a bird in the frogmouth family. It was first described in 1901, but not recognized as highly distinct until 2007. It is the only known member of the genus Rigidipenna...

 is a species (instead of a subspecies of the Marbled Frogmouth

Marbled Frogmouth

The Marbled Frogmouth is a species of bird in the Podargidae family.It is found in Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands....

, as formerly believed). He worked extensively on Easter Island, carrying out the first systemicatic exacavations of the island in order to identify the plants and animals that once lived there.

Education

• Bachelors degree in Biology from Edinboro State College in 1973.
• Masters degree in Zoology from the University of Florida in 1975.
• Doctorate in Geosciences from the University of Arizona in 1982.