On Thursday 4/14, starting at 3, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and more specifically the Biodiversity Research Collections, is hosting a reception in the Biology Physics atrium, honoring the career of mammalogist Ralph Wetzel, who retired in the mid-1980s after 40 years on faculty here. Among other things he discovered that the Chacoan peccary was not extinct but was alive and well. Ralph published an article in the prestigious journal Science in 1975 for this discovery.
The reception will include remarks by one of his former students, still living in the area, and by one of our grad students who set up a new display case in the atrium featuring Wetzel. Wetzel family members will be present, coming from Florida and Maine.
The reception will be followed by a presentation at 4 pm by Phil Myers, who was a colleague of Wetzel’s and recently retired from the University of Michigan.