Robert "Bob" Lynn Carroll (May 5, 1938 – April 8, 2020) was an American–Canadian vertebrate paleontologist who specialised in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians and reptiles. Biography Carroll was an only child and grew up on a farm near Lansing, Michigan. He was introduced to paleontology by his father shortly after his fifth birthday, and by the time he was eight he had decided he wanted to be a vertebrate paleontologist. In that same year he received as a Christmas present the left femur of an Allosaurus, courtesy of Edwin H. Colbert, whom his father had told about his interest. In his teen years his parents took him on many fossil hunting trips to Wyoming and South Dakota. After high-school, he went to Michigan State University, where he received a B.Sc. in 1959, majoring in Geology. From there he went to Harvard University where he studied biology and palaeontology under Alfred Sherwood Romer for his M.A. (1961) and Ph.D. degrees (1963); Carroll was Romer's last student. His doctoral thesis dealt with what is now known as Dissorophoidea, a group of Paleozoic amphibians that are often considered the closest relatives of present day amphibians, although they may also be stem-tetrapods if lissamphibians instead arose from within Lepospondyli. After obtaining his Ph.D., Carroll held a National Research Council (NRC) postdoctoral fellowship at Redpath Museum at McGill University in Montreal (1962-1963), and then a National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral position at the Natural History Museum in London. During this time, he studied tetrapod remains from the Pennsylvanian lycopod “tree stumps” at Joggins, Nova Scotia (a variety of temnospondyls, microsaurs, and basal amniotes). Most of this material was collected and first studied by Sir William Dawson, the first Principal of McGill University, in the nineteenth century. Returning from London, in 1964 Carroll joined the permanent staff of McGill University as curator of geology at the Redpath Museum and became the curator of vertebrate paleontology the following year. At McGill, he was an assistant professor of zoology from 1964 to 1969, an associate professor of biology from 1969-1974, a full professor from 1974 onwards, and was appointed Strathcona Professor of Zoology in 1987. From 1985 to 1991 he was director of the Redpath Museum. He was an active professor until 2003, after which he was an emeritus professor. Carroll died on April 8, 2020, in Westmount, Quebec, of complications from COVID-19. He was survived by Anna