Stony Brook University Allison Ralph (Pete) Palmer (January 9, 1927 – October 24, 2022) was an American paleontologist and geologist.
Palmer spent a year with the Bureau of Economic Geology in Texas before starting his doctoral project mentored by William Charles “Charlie” Bell.
He and his collaborators spent two decades surveying, assessing and documenting rock formations with current methods to produce much better descriptions.
This allowed him to introduce the concept of the biomere as a biostratigraphic unit to solve problems in using fossils to determine the age of rock and basin deposits in North America.
In 1980, Palmer left Stony Brook to become the centennial science program coordinator for the Geological Society of America in Boulder, Colorado.
He retired from the Geological Society of America in 1993 to become an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he remained active in research.