Edward Timothy Tozer

Edward Timothy "Tim" Tozer (* 13. January 1928 in Potters Bar in Hertfordshire ; † 26. December 2010 in Vancouver ) was a British-Canadian paleontologist and was considered a leading expert on the stratigraphy of the Triassic and the biostratigraphy and taxonomy of ammonites of Triad. He was also a pioneer in paleontological exploration of the Canadian Arctic.

life and work

During the Second World War , he was sent to Canada by his parents, where he attended school. From 1945 he studied geology at the University of Cambridge ( King's College ) and went to the University of Western Ontario as a lecturer in 1948 . After completing his doctorate at the University of Toronto , he went with his friend, the paleontologist Raymond Thorsteinsson , to the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), where, inspired by the paleontologist Frank McLearn , he found his life's work, the classification of his in western Canada and the Arctic collected ammonites of the Triassic. He classified and named over 200 types of ammonites. He undertook his first expedition to the arctic islands of Canada in 1954, starting from the weather station in Mold Bay on Prince Patrick Island . From 1955 he was involved in the Yves Fortier (YO Fortier) led Operation Franklin for mapping and geological exploration of the Canadian Arctic, which was first supported by helicopters. In 1956 he continued this together with Thorsteinsson with the help of an aircraft adapted to the arctic conditions (a Piper Super Cub) of the bush pilot Weldy Phipps (starting point was the Eureka weather station on Ellesmere Island ). He later shared the field work between the Arctic and northeastern British Columbia , where the Upper Triassic is developed. In 1995 he retired from GSC.

From Tozer comes a time scale of the Triassic based on ammonites as key fossils based on finds in the cordillera of British Columbia , Nevada and the Canadian Arctic. To this end, he proposed four new levels of Griesbachium , Dienerium , Smithium and Spatium for the lower Triassic. Today they are recognized as lower grades by the International Stratigraphy Commission. He collaborated with Nevada specialist Norman J. Silberling on his Triassic ammonite biostratigraphy .

He was married to Ruth Tozer († 2010) since 1958 and had a son and a daughter. Like his wife, he was a passionate sailor.

Tozer was a member of the Order of Canada (1993) and the Royal Society of Canada (1966) and received the Willet G. Miller Medal in 1979 and the Elkanah Billings Medal of the Geological Association of Canada in 1989. In 2002 he received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal . In 1962 he received the Medal of Merit from the Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists and in 1969 the Patron's Medal from the Royal Geographical Society with Thorsteinsson.

Fonts

• with Ray Thorsteinsson: Western Queen Elizabeth Islands, Arctic Archipelago. Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 332, 1964
• Lower triassic stages and ammonoid zones of arctic Canada. In: Geological Survey of Canada Paper. 65-12, 1965
• A Standard for Triassic Time. In: Geological Survey of Canada Bulletin. Volume 156, 1967
• Canadian triassic ammonoid faunas. In: Geological Survey of Canada Bulletin. Volume 467, 1994, pp. 1-663
• The Trias and Its Ammonoids: The Evolution of a Time Scale. In: Geological Survey of Canada Miscellaneous Report. Volume 35, 1984, pp. 1-171
• with Norman J. Silberling: Biostratigraphic classification of the marine Triassic in North America , Geological Society of America, Special Paper 110, 1968

literature

• Thomas Frisch: Edward Timothy Tozer (1928-2010). In: Arctic. Volume 64, 2011, pp. 388-389
• Spencer G. Lucas, The Triassic chronostratigraphic scale: history and status, in Spencer G. Lucas (Ed.), The triassic timescale, Geological Society Special Publication 334, 2010, pp. 17-41
• Dedication to Norman J. Silberling and E. Timothy Tozer, in SG Lucas, JA Spielman (Ed.), The global triassic, New Mexico Museum of Natural History Bulletin 41, pdf , with list of publications

Web links

• Nora Ryell: Paleontologist Edward Tozer explored Canada's Far North and its treasure trove of fossils. In: The Globe and Mail. March 8, 2011