COUDERSPORT NATIVE ONE OF THE TOP AUTHORITIES ON SPIDERS

Coudersport native Bill Shear is on the cutting edge of biological science.

SPIDERS Coudersport native Bill Shear has not only discovered the oldest land mammals ever discovered in North America - dating back 390 million years - he has also advanced a theory that is challenging many theories of human development.

The soft-spoken and affable Shear is one of the world's foremost authorities on spiders and evolution.

"Bill was always fascinated by spiders," recalled his mother, 91- year-old Maxine Shear of Coudersport. "Even as a boy, he would sit and stare out the window for hours, watching how a spider carefully wove her web and remarking to us how amazing it was."

William A. Shear, Ph.D., is a biologist and professor of biology at Hampden-Sydney College in central Virginia. When he's not in the classroom, he is out in the field, trying to quench his endless thirst for scientific knowledge.

"I was pretty much raised in the woods and my earliest interest was in the plants around me," said Shear, who often wandered Ice Mountain in Sweden Valley, where his parents operated the famous Coudersport Ice Mine. SPIDERS "My grandmother, who had studied botany, taught me all the names and loaned me her ancient botany books from around the turn of the 20th century," Dr. Shear noted.

At the College of Wooster (Ohio), he fell under the tutelage of Professor Andy Weaver, an expert on spiders, centipedes, and other creepy crawlers. In graduate school at Harvard, the noted Dr. Herb Levi became his driving force.

Twenty years later, Shear said, a chance encounter with Ian Rolfe, curator at the Royal Museum of Scotland, sparked his interest in paleontology.

Shear's areas of expertise range from entomology, invertebrate zoology and evolutionary theory to the history of earth and life. He is also author of many scholarly papers and articles, as well as the book Spiders: Webs, Behavior and Evolution.

Several years ago, a team led by Dr. Shear helped to reveal some of the earliest tiny land arthropods among primitive land plant fossils. To get a clearer look, Shear used acid to dissolve surrounding rock and expose the organic fragments of SPIDERS both the fossilized plants and minute animals.

After extracting the microfossils from the rock, Shear painstakingly pieced together the exposed fragments and, in so doing, revealed a whole suite of arthropods, including one similar to a modern spider.

"I can remember seeing some of the really striking fossils for the first time," he recalled. "I got a feeling of excitement that's probably very similar to scoring a big touchdown. You just feel on top of the world, and it makes it worth all of the tedious searching and work."

Shear's work was heralded around the world as the first scientific confirmation of a common assumption - that arthropods did not move from sea to land in one invasion. Instead, many different groups invaded the land independently.

He has also theorized that herbivores did not exist in the Paleozoic era. Conventional thinking has been that human society would not be possible without herbivores. But Shear has discovered in the fossils what he sees as proof that carnivores instead were consuming other sources of sustenance.

Dr. Shear suggests that students considering a career in biology start with a small, private liberal-arts college with a good biology department.

"The individual attention you will get will provide you with a huge head start," he said. "(But) be sure that you always follow your own enthusiasms; you'll do best if what you are researching is compelling to you."

One of Potter County's most accomplished professionals, Shear has no regrets.

"I like the aspect of discovery that looking for new species, new fossils, and new evolutionary links brings," he said. "After more than 35 years and more than 200 new species, it is as fresh as ever.