Eric J. Sargis is a Professor of Anthropology, with secondary appointments in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, School of the Environment, and Council on Archaeological Studies. He is also Curator of Mammalogy and Vertebrate Paleontology at the Yale Peabody Museum and Director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies.
His interests include the origin and early evolution of primates, and he is currently collaborating on analyses of Paleocene euarchontan skeletons, including those of plesiadapiform primates. He also studies Old World monkey diversity using integrative approaches that synthesize data from evolutionary morphology, genetics, behavioral ecology, vocalizations, and biogeography. His current collaborative study on this topic focuses on newly discovered guenon taxa from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and this project has significant conservation implications for these threatened primates. He also co-directs Yale Peabody Museum paleontological field expeditions to latest Cretaceous and earliest Paleocene localities in Montana. He and his co-directors are studying mammalian faunal turnover across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary and focusing on the earliest Paleocene from which the oldest primate fossils are known. In 2008, he published an edited book, Mammalian Evolutionary Morphology: A Tribute to Frederick S. Szalay. He has conducted fieldwork in Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and Florida. He is also a Series Co-Editor for the Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology book series.