Francis Parker Shepard (10 May 1897 – 25 April 1985) was an American sedimentologist most associated with his studies of submarine canyons and seafloor currents around continental shelves and slopes.
After meeting his future wife, Elizabeth Buchner, he chose to study for his doctorate at the University of Chicago, close to her Milwaukee home.
Examining the distribution of sediments on the New England shelf, he found evidence of the role of sea level change in the evolution of shelves.
After a sabbatical in 1933–1934 spent studying submarine canyons off the coast of California, Shepard in 1937 took another leave (lasting for a year and a half) from the University of Illinois and moved his family and two of his graduate students, Robert S. Dietz and Kenneth O. Emery, to Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.
Submarine canyons, he suggested, were initially carved by rivers when sea levels were lower during the recent Pleistocene epoch.