[1] He attended elementary and secondary public schools until 1955 and in 1967 obtained a PhD at the University of Michigan with a thesis about the taxonomy of the Mexican gray squirrel (Sciurus aureogaster).
In the 1970s he conducted a three-year expedition to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi where he discovered several new mice and rat species.
Musser was among the authors of the publication Mammal Species of the World (1993 and 2005) where he co-wrote the section about the order Rodentia in collaboration with Michael D. Carleton.
Guy Musser is married to Mary Ellen Holden, a zoologist herself and directress of the Upper Elementary in the Trinity Montessori Christian School in Charleston, South Carolina.
[3] Guy Musser received the Clinton Hart Merriam Award of the American Society of Mammalogists in 1992.