Lawrence Richard Heaney (born December 2, 1952, in Washington, DC ) is an American mammalogist, ecologist and biogeographer.
From June 1971 to September 1971, Heaney worked as a collector for the Delaware Museum of Natural History.
From 1988 he was curator and since 2002 he has been head of the mammalogical department of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois.
In 1996, Pedro C. Gonzales and Robert S. Kennedy named the Panay Bark Rat (Crateromys heaneyi) in his honor.
[2] In 1997, Colin Groves honored Heaney in naming the subspecies Prionailurus bengalensis heaneyi, the Bengal cat from the Philippine island of Palawan.