Thomas Defler Author

Dr. Thomas Defler was born in the United States (Denver, Colorado) on November 26, 1941 and did university studies in Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany (1 year), University of Miami, Florida (1 year), University of Colorado (7 years) and University of Colorado at Denver (2 years). He holds a B.A. (biology), M.A (botany). and Ph.D. (zoology). Working as a laboratory assistant in a Denver primate laboratory, he became interested in primates and determined to relocate to a tropical primate habitat country. He moved to Colombia in January, 1976 as a Peace Corps Volunteer and worked for five years as a PC primatologist with the Colombian government agency INDERENA (natural resources) doing primate research for Colombia in a remote national park called El Tuparro National Park that abuts the Orinoco River. In 1981 Dr. Defler moved south to the Colombian Amazon in Vaupés where he established a tropical research station in undisturbed and virgin rainforest in a very isolated and wild part of the Colombia near the Brazilian border. He directed this station for 17 years, studying primates and other mammals and receiving Colombian students.

In 1997 Dr. Defler became a professor at the Colombian National University in Leticia. He was obligated to leave  research station in 1998 by the Colombian guerilla group the FARC. He lived sporadically for about seven and one half years in Leticia, Colombia as a National University professor and  established another research station in another remote part of Amazonian rainforest in southern Colombia near the Amacayacu National Park (15 km from the Brazilian border). In 2006 he was transferred by request to the main campus in Bogotá where he taught until retiring in December, 2016.

Of the several courses that Dr. Defler has  taught (including evolution), the course “History of South American Land Mammals” (History de los Mamíferos Terrrestres de Sudamérica) set him on a new path of studying the evolution of South American mammals, though he continues also to work as a primatologist and to write and to publish  as a scientist.