Gerd Westermann

Gerd Ernst Gerold Westermann (born May 11, 1927 in Berlin ; † November 5, 2014 in Burlington (Ontario) ) was a German paleontologist.

Westermann, who grew up as the son of an engineer and an artist in Goslar and worked in mining before studying, finished his studies in Braunschweig with a diploma in 1950 and received his doctorate in 1953 at the University of Tübingen under Otto Heinrich Schindewolf with a revision of the ammonite family Otoitidae from the middle Jurassic. To do this, he dug in a clay pit in Gerzen near Alfeld (Leine) , the main site of the paleontologist Erich Mascke (* 1876), who worked on this ammonite family at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1957 he went to Canada, where he was first a lecturer and then a professor at McMaster University . In 1988 he retired.

He was a specialist in ammonites, especially in the Jurassic. In Canada he initially dealt with clams of the Triassic and ammonites of the Bajocian from Alaska. From the mid-1960s he expanded this to South America (Argentina, Chile), then to Mexico and Peru, Africa (Kenya, Tanzania), India, the Himalayas (Nepal, Tibet) and Oceania (New Guinea and New Zealand). He collected on all continents except Antarctica. In addition to systematics and biostratigraphy, he also dealt with the paleobiology and ecology of ammonites.

He wrote 23 monographs and books and over 175 articles.

In 1995 he received the Billings Medal from the Geological Association of Canada and in 2004 the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 6th International Cephalopod Congress.

Since 1991 he has been a corresponding member of the Argentine Academy of Exact Sciences (Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales).

Seven fossil animal species or taxa were named after him, including Westermanniceras and a fossil alligator relative from Argentina.

Fonts

• Monograph of the Otoitidae (Ammonoideae), supplements to the Geological Yearbook 15, 1954,
• Monograph of the Bajocian genera Sphaeroceras and Chondroceras (Ammonoidea), supplements to the Geological Yearbook 24, 1956
• Ammonite fauna and stratigraphy of Bathonia NW Germany, supplements to Geological Yearbook 32, 1958
• with Harish M. Verma: The ammonoid fauna of the Kimmeridgian-Tithonian boundary beds of Mombasa, Kenya, Life Science Contributions Royal Ontario Museum 135, 1984, Archive
• Form, structure and function of shell and siphuncle in coiled Mesozoic ammonoids, Life Science Contributions Royal Ontario Museum 78, 1971, Archive
• Editor with G. Ya. Krymholts, MS Mesezhnikov: The Jurassic ammonite zones of the Soviet Union, GSA Special Paper 223, 1988
• Published in: The Jurassic of the Circum-Pacific, Cambridge University Press 1992, 2005
• The ammonite fauna of the Kialagvik formation at Wide Bay, Alaska Peninsula, Bulletins of American paleontology, v. 47. no.216, 1964.
• with others: Jurásico Medio en el Perú, Lima 1980
• with Harish M. Verma: The Tithonian (Jurassic) ammonite fauna and stratigraphy of Sierra Catorce, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Bulletins of American paleontology v. 63, no.277, 1973
• with TA Getty: New Middle Jurassic Ammonitina from New Guinea, Bulletins of American paleontology, v. 57, no. 256, 1970

Web links

• Obituary, The Hamilton Spectator, Nov. 24, 2014
• 60 years of Gerd Westermann in Gerzen
• Obituary at the Argentine Paleontological Society by Alberto Riccardi

References and comments

1. ↑ Mascke The Stephanoceras relatives in the Coronatenschichten of northern Germany, Alfeld P. Dobler 1906 (dissertation in Goettingen), Online