Georges Ubaghs

Georges Jean Charles Ubaghs (born February 29, 1916 in Angleur , † January 31, 2005 in Herstal ) was a Belgian paleontologist . He was a specialist in echinoderms of the Paleozoic Era and as such one of the most important of the second half of the 20th century. He made a particular contribution to researching the paleozoic sea ​​lilies (Crinoidea), the eocrinoids and the carpoids . He was a grandson of the famous Liège painter Jean Ubaghs (1852–1937).

Career and work

George Ubaghs studied at the University of Liège , where he received his doctorate in 1939. Since he had not yet done his military service at the time of the attack by the Wehrmacht on Belgium in 1940 , he was not mobilized and did not take part in the fighting. During the occupation he began to study fossil echinoderms intensively. So he laid the foundation stone for his life's work, which was almost exclusively dedicated to this group of organisms.

After the liberation of Belgium in 1945, Ubaghs was appointed professor at the University of Liège. By the end of the 1950s, he published numerous articles on fossil echinoderms from the Silurian and Devonian in western, central and northern Europe. This work was of such high quality that Ubaghs quickly became a recognized expert in the field of echinodermology. So it is not surprising that the famous French paleontologist Jean Piveteau approached him and offered to write the chapters on several large echinoderms (Crinoidea, Stelleroidea, Ophiocistoidea) for the third volume of the Compendium Traité de Paléontologie (published 1953).

He also worked for eight years as a micropalaeontologist for the oil company Petrofina in the 1950s and examined foraminifera from exploratory boreholes in Angola for biostratigraphic purposes . However, no publications resulted from this activity.

From 1959 on, Ubaghs' research focused almost exclusively on the echinoderms of the Cambrian and Ordovician , especially on the Carpoideen (Homalozoa), an early echinoderm group with unusual morphology. Among other things, he showed that the elongated, segmented body appendages (Aulacophor) of the Stylophora is ( "Calcichordata") is not a stem (Pelma) as occurs in Crinoids and other sessile echinoderms, but that the Aulacophor a Ambulakralrinne comprises covered with movable plates and was a kind of arm structure for food intake. In the 1960s and 70s Ubaghs published many essays on the anatomy and systematics of carpoids, eocrinoids and early sea lilies and also acquired generally recognized expert status in this area. It was during this time that the height of his scientific work also fell, the work on his contributions to what is probably the most internationally important standard work on paleontology of invertebrates, the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology . In the three parts published between 1966 and 1978 that deal with echinoderms (Part S - Echinodermata 1: General characteristics of Echinodermata, Homalozoa, Crinozoa without Crinoidea, 1968; Part T - Echinodermata 2: Crinoidea, 1978; Part U - Echinodermata 3: Asterozoa, Echinozoa, 1966), several chapters each come from Ubaghs' pen. This enabled him to present, among other things, his new interpretations of the functional morphology of the stylophors and other carpoids in this much-read work, including the differences he recognized between the arms (brachia) of sea lilies and the arms (brachioli) of the extinct sessile echinoderms of the Paleozoic era (Eocrinoids, cystoids, blastoids ).

After his retirement in 1984, Ubaghs became an honorary professor at the University of Liège. He continued to devote himself to the Cambrian and Ordovician echinoderms, especially those from the Montagne Noire in France, and published corresponding writings. His last work was published in 1998, a few months before his wife's death. Badly hit by the loss, she survived the Ubaghs by almost six years.

Honors

Dedication names

Several fossil sea lily species have been named in honor of Georges Ubagh. Gazu include Scoliocrinus ubaghsi Haude 2007 from the higher Middle Devonian of the Sauerland (northeastern Rhenish Slate Mountains) described in one of the two Georges-Ubaghs Memorial editions of Annales de Paléontologie and Apektocrinus ubaghsi Guensburg & Sprinkle 2009. layers of the Cambrian / Ordovician boundary region of Idaho , Type species of the genus Apektocrinus Guensburg & Sprinkle 2009 and the family Apektocrinidae Guensburg & Sprinkle 2009.

The Liolaemid species Liolaemus ubaghsi Esquerré et al. is named after Georges Ubaghs. Although at first glance there is no connection between Ubaghs acting as echinodermologists and this recent reptile taxon , the main author of the article in which L. ubaghsi is described is a great-grandson of Ubaghs.

Other honors and awards

Ubaghs was awarded the Adolphe Wettrem Prize of the Académie Royale de Belgique (ARB) in 1944. In 1971 he became a corresponding member of the ARB and finally a full member in 1981 (1997 application for retirement). In addition to the honorary professorship at the University of Liège, Ubaghs was honored in 1984 with the award of the Leopold Order, the Belgian Order of Merit (comparable to the Federal Cross of Merit), in the second highest class ( Grand Officier ).

On January 30 and 31, 2006, on the first anniversary of his death, an echinodermological symposium took place in Dijon under the title Journées Georges Ubaghs (“Georges Ubaghs Days”). Some of the works presented at this symposium were published in 2007 in numbers 3 and 4 of Volume 93 of the Annales de Paléontologie .

literature

• Bertrand Lefebvre: Introduction - A tribute to Prof. Georges Ubaghs (1916-2005). Annales de Paléontologie. Vol. 93, No. 3, 2007, pp. 179-181, doi : 10.1016 / j.annpal.2007.06.002
• Bertrand Lefebvre: Introduction - A tribute to Prof. Georges Ubaghs (1916–2005) - Part 2. Annales de Paléontologie. Vol. 93, No. 4, 2007, pp. 229-231, doi : 10.1016 / j.annpal.2007.09.002
• Bertrand Lefebvre, André Delmer: Notice sur Georges Ubaghs. Annuaire de l'Académie Royale de Belgique. Year 2008, pp. 3–12 ( PDF 283 kB)
• Bertrand Lefebvre, Edouard Poty: Georges Ubaghs (1916-2005). Ordovician News. No. 23, 2006, pp. 15–16 ( PDF complete issue, 1.8 MB)

Web links

• Bertrand Lefebvre, Edouard Poty: Georges Ubaghs (1916-2005). Obituary on the website of the Association of Amateur Geologists of Belgium (AGAB), with a comprehensive bibliography of the life's work of Georges Ubaghs

Individual evidence

1. ^ Reimund Haude: Mode of life of fan-hand-like Scoliocrinus according to functional form and syntopy with two other irregular crinoids from the Middle Devonian of the Rhenish Massif (Germany). Annales de Paléontologie. Vol. 93, No. 4, 2007, pp. 291-316, doi : 10.1016 / j.annpal.2007.09.006
2. ↑ Thomas E. Guensburg, James Sprinkle: Solving the Mystery of Crinoid Ancestry: New Fossil Evidence of Arm Origin and Development. Paleontology. Vol. 83, No. 3, 2009, pp. 350–364, doi : 10.1666 / 08-090.1 (alternatively: JSTOR 29739100 )
3. ↑ Damien Esquerré, Jaime Troncoso-Palacios, Carlos F. Garín, Herman Núñez: The missing leopard lizard: Liolaemus ubaghsi sp. nov., a new species of the leopardinus clade (Reptilia: Squamata: Liolaemidae) from the Andes of the O'Higgins Region in Chile. Zootaxa. Vol. 3815, No. 4, 2014, pp. 507-525, doi : 10.11646 / zootaxa.3815.4.3 (alternative full-text access : desquerre.com )