Everett C. Olson

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Everett Claire Olson (born November 6, 1910 in Waupaca , Wisconsin , † November 27, 1993 ) was an American geologist and vertebrate paleontologist .

life and work

Olson grew up in Hinsdale , a rural suburb of Chicago . Even as a schoolboy he collected butterflies and later continued this regularly in North America and the tropics with his entomologist colleague G. A. Bartholomew. He studied chemistry and then geology at the University of Chicago , where he also emerged as an artistic gymnast and had an athletic scholarship. After completing his bachelor's degree in 1932, he studied vertebrate paleontology with Alfred Romer . Romer supervised Olson's PhD after going to Harvard . After graduation, Olson was a paleontologist in the Department of Geology at the University of Chicago in 1935. During World War II he worked as a cartographer for the military and published books about it. He became a professor in Chicago, where he helped vertebrate paleontology to become more independent from geologists by founding an interdisciplinary research committee in 1947.

At that time, Olson applied new methods in vertebrate paleontology (such as sedimentological-statistical methods, aerial cartography, paleoecology, functional morphology and morphometry, taphonomy ). He dealt in particular with the early evolution of the land vertebrates in the Permian (especially therapsids , a group of early mammalian relatives) from North America (with excavations in North Texas and Oklahoma) and South Africa, but also Russia, where he established contacts from 1959 (for example to Iwan Antonowitsch Jefremow , the founder of taphonomy). He came up with the subject through his teacher Romer and the processing of the collections in the Walker Museum at the University of Chicago. His research was able to close a previously existing gap in the fossil record in the early Permian. In 1952 he introduced the concept of chronofauna for ecological communities that exist over longer geological periods, but do not necessarily always contain the same species in the respective ecological niches.

In 1987 he received the first Romer-Simpson Medal of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology , of which he became an honorary member in 1980. Since 1980 he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences . From 1953 to 1958 he was editor of Evolution and 1962 to 1967 of the Journal of Geology .

He had been married since 1939 and had three children. He played the violin and piano and enjoyed singing paleontological songs at social gatherings.

Dedication names

The species epithet of the captorhinid species Reiszorhinus olsoni and the name of the higher temnospondylene taxon Olsoniformes pay tribute to Olson's services in researching Permian terrestrial vertebrate faunas .

Fonts (selection)

  • with RL Miller: Morphological Integration. University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL 1958; Reissued in 1999 with an afterword by Barry Chernoff and Paul M. Magwene, ISBN 0-226-62905-8
  • Parallelism in the evolution of the Permian reptilian faunas in the old and new worlds. Fieldiana Zoology, Vol. 37, No. 13, 1955, pp. 385-401, doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.2838
  • Fauna of the Vale and Choza. 14-part series of publications on the vertebrate fauna of the "Vale" and "Choza" formations, layers of the late sub-permeable Clear Fork Formation (formerly Clear Fork Group) from North Texas:
  • Size frequency distribution in samples of extinct organisms. The Journal of Geology, Vol. 65, No. 3, 1957, pp. 309-333 ( JSTOR )
  • Morphology, Paleontology and Evolution. In: Sol Tax (Ed.): Evolution after Darwin. Volume I: The Evolution of Life. Chicago University Press, Chicago IL 1960, pp. 523-545 ( archive.org )
  • Jaw mechanisms: rhipidistian, amphibians, reptiles. American Zoologist, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1961, pp. 205-215 ( JSTOR 3881251 )
  • Late Permian Terrestrial Vertebrates, U.S.A. and U. S. S. R. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 52, No. 2, 1962, pp. 1-224 ( JSTOR 1005904 )
  • Russian viewpoints on evolution. Evolution, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1963, pp. 119-120 ( JSTOR ); a review of two works by Soviet evolutionary researchers
  • Evolution of life. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London 1965
  • Community evolution and the origin of mammals. Ecology, Vol. 47, No. 2, 1966, pp. 291-302 ( JSTOR )
  • Vertebrate Paleozoology. Wiley Interscience, New York 1971
  • with Jane Ann Robinson: Concepts of Evolution. Charles R. Merrill, Columbus OH 1975
  • Taphonomy: Its history and its role in community evolution. In: Anna K. Behrensmeyer, Andrew P. Hill (eds.): Fossils in the Making - Vertebrate Taphonomy and Paleoecology University of Chicago Press, Chicago IL 1980, pp. 5-19
  • The problem of missing links: today and yesterday. The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 56, No. 4, 1981, pp. 405-452 ( JSTOR 2824990 )
  • The Other Side of the Medal - A Paleobiologist Reflects on the Art and Serendipity of Science. The McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company, Blacksburg VA 1990 ( digitized , HTML version); contains u. a. Memories of working with Ivan Yefremov
  • with Malcolm S. Gordon: Invasions of the Land - The Transitions of Organisms from Aquatic to Terrestrial Life. Columbia University Press, New York [u. a.] 1995, ISBN 0-231-06876-X

Literature on EC Olson

  • Michael A. Bell: Everett C. Olson, 1910-1993. National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir, Vol. 75, 1998, pp. 240–263 ( PDF 165 kB)
  • Ronald Rainger: Everett C. Olson and the development of vertebrate paleoecology and taphonomy. Archives of Natural History. Vol. 24, No. 3, 1997, pp. 373-396, doi : 10.3366 / anh. 1997.24.3.373

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Everett C. Olson: The evolution of the Permian vertebrate chronofauna. Evolution, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1952, pp. 181–196 ( JSTOR ( Memento of the original from December 19, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jstor.org
  2. ^ SS Sumida, J. Dodick, A. Metcalf, G. Albright: Reiszorhinus olsoni , a New Single-Tooth-Rowed Captorhinid Reptile from the Lower Permian of Texas. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 30, No. 3, 2010, pp. 704-714, doi : 10.1080 / 02724631003758078
  3. ↑ JS Anderson, AC Henrici, SS Sumida, T. Martens, DS Berman: Georgenthalia clavinasica , a new genus and species of dissorophoid temnospondyl from the Early Permian of Germany, and the relationships of the family Amphibamidae. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 28, No. 1, 2008, pp. 61–75, doi : 10.1671 / 0272-4634 (2008) 28 [61: GCANGA] 2.0.CO; 2 (alternatively: JSTOR  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.jstor.org  
personal data
SURNAME Olson, Everett C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Olson, Everett Claire (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American vertebrate paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Waupaca , Wisconsin
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1993