Gregory Retallack

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Gregory Retallack, 1982

Gregory John Retallack (born November 8, 1951 in Hobart , Tasmania ) is an Australian geologist and paleontologist (paleobotanist) who specializes in paleo soils . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Retallack ".

Life

Retallack grew up in the suburbs of Sydney and studied biology and paleontology at Macquarie University ( bachelor's degree 1974) and at the University of New England , where he received his doctorate in geology in 1978 . As a post-doctoral student he was at Indiana University , was Visiting Assistant Professor at Northern Illinois University from 1977/78, and from 1981 Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon . In 1986 he became an associate professor and 1992 professor there.

plant

He researches the development of soils in the geological past and deals with paleobotany (development of grass steppes in the Tertiary , rise and distribution of angiosperms in the Cretaceous with field studies in Kansas, fossil plants of the Triassic in Gondwana and their paleoecology ). He examined the evidence in soils on the environment during the evolution of apes and humans in East Africa (Kenya) and evidence of mass extinction in paleo soils (both at the Cretaceous-Tertiary border in Montana, at the end of the Permian, among others in the Antarctic). He also found that during the first land colonization by tetrapods , which he studied in Pennsylvania, the soils pointed to shallowly flooded forested regions rather than arid environments. His theses that the Precambrian Ediacara fauna are of terrestrial origin rather than of marine origin, as is usually assumed, are controversial . For example, he interprets the fossil Dickinsonia as terrestrial lichens.

Retallack examined evidence of past climatic changes, for example he pointed to the role of the spread of the grass steppes in the Tertiary for a cooling of the global climate. From the relative abundance of the carbon isotope C 13, he concludes that methane is released in the event of mass extinction at the Permian-Triassic boundary , whereby, based on the relatively short (less than 10,000 years from varveal sediments and coal investigations) release times he has demonstrated, coal combustion as a result of Flood basalts suspected as a source.

He examined and named the oldest known eukaryotes Diskagma buttonii (South Africa, age 2.2 billion years), which were also land animals .

In archeology, he examined the assignment of certain soils and plants in Greek temples, which vary according to him depending on which god they are consecrated to.

Awards

He received the Stillewell Medal from the Geological Society of Australia. In 1999 he received the Antarctica Service Medal from the National Science Foundation.

Private

He has been married since 1981 and has two sons.

Fonts

  • Soils of the past: an introduction to paleopedology. 2nd edition, Blackwell, Oxford, 2001, ISBN 0-632-05376-3
  • A color guide to paleosols. John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, 1997

Some essays (for more see footnotes):

  • Field recognition of paleosols. In: Geological Society of America Special Papers. Volume 216, 1988, pp. 1-20
  • with CR Feakes: Trace fossil evidence for Late Ordovician animals on land. In: Science. Volume 235, 1987, pp. 61-63, doi: 10.1126 / science.235.4784.61 .
  • with DP Dugas, AE Bestland: Fossil soils and grasses of the earliest East African grasslands. In: Science. Volume 247, 1990, pp. 1325-1328.
  • with Nathan Sheldon, Satoshi Tanaka: Geochemical climofunctions from North American soils and application to paleosols across the Eocene-Oligocene boundary in Oregon. In: The Journal of geology. Volume 110, 2002, pp. 687-696
  • with J. Germán-Heins: Evidence from paleosols for the geological antiquity of rain forest. In: Science. Volume 265, 1994, pp. 499-502.
  • Permian-Triassic life crisis on land. In: Science. Volume 267, 1995, pp. 77-80.
  • Postapocalyptic greenhouse paleoclimate revealed by earliest Triassic paleosols in the Sydney Basin, Australia. In: Geological Society of America Bulletin. Volume 111, 1999, pp. 52-70
  • with Sheldon a. a .: Multiple Early Triassic greenhouse crises impeded recovery from Late Permian mass extinction. In: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. Volume 308, 2011, 233-251
  • with JJ Veevers, R. Morante: Global coal gap between Permian – Triassic extinction and Middle Triassic recovery of peat-forming plants. In: Geological Society of America Bulletin. Volume 108, 1996, pp. 195-207
  • with others: Middle-Late Permian mass extinction on land. In: Geological Society of America Bulletin. Volume 118, 2006, pp. 1398-1411
  • Early forest soils and their role in Devonian global change. In: Science. Volume 276, 1997, pp. 583-585
  • A 300 million year record of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil plant cuticles. In: Nature. Volume 411, 2001, pp. 287-290.
  • Cenozoic expansion of grasslands and climatic cooling. In: The Journal of Geology. Volume 109, 2001, pp. 407-426
  • Mallee model for mammal communities of the early Cenozoic and Mesozoic. In: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. Volume 342/343, 2012, pp. 111-129
  • Ediacaran life on land. In: Nature. Volume 493, 2013, pp. 89-92
  • Exceptional fossil preservation during CO2 greenhouse crises? In: Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. Volume 307, 2011, pp. 59-74
  • Earliest Triassic origin of Isoetes and quillwort evolutionary radiation. In: Journal of Paleontology. Volume 71, 1997, pp. 500-521.
  • Lepidopteris callipteroides, an earliest Triassic seed fern of the Sydney Basin, southeastern Australia. In: Alcheringa. Volume 26, 2002, pp. 475-500

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ life data according to Pamela Kalte u. a .: American Men and Women of Science. Thomson Gale 2004
  2. ↑ Retallack: Paleosols. In: W. Henke, I. Tattersall: Handbook of paleoanthropology. Volume 1: Principles, methods and approaches. Springer Verlag, Berlin 2007, pp. 383-408. After that, there were repeated changes between a wetter (spreading forest) and drier (spreading savannah) climate and significant evolutionary changes such as the transition to an upright gait 6 million years ago was not associated with savannah expansion but with an increase in forests.
  3. ^ Retallack: End-Cretaceous acid rain as a selective extinction mechanism between birds and dinosaurs. In: PJ Currie, EB Koppelhus, MA Shugar, JL Wright: Feathered dragons: studies on the transition from dinosaurs to birds. 2004, pp. 35-64
  4. ^ Retallack: Woodland hypothesis for Devonian tetrapod evolution. In: The Journal of Geology. Volume 119, 2011, pp. 1-20
  5. ^ Retallack: Where the Ediacara fossils lichens? In: Palaeobiology. Volume 10, 1994, pp. 523-544
  6. ^ Brian Switek: Controversial claim puts life on land 65 million years early. Nature News, December 12, 2012
  7. ^ Evelyn S. Krull, GJ Retallack: δ13C depth profiles from paleosols across the Permian-Triassic boundary: Evidence for methane release. In: Geological Society of America Bulletin. Volume 112, No. 9, 2000, pp. 1459-1472
  8. ^ Retallack, A. Hope Years: Methane release from igneous intrusion of coal during Late Permian extinction events. In: Journal of Geology. Volume 116, 2008, pp. 1-20
  9. ^ Gregory J. Retallack, Evelyn S. Krull, Glenn D. Thackray, Dula Parkinson: Problematic urn-shaped fossils from a Paleoproterozoic (2.2 Ga) paleosol in South Africa. In: Precambrian Research. Volume 235, September 2013, pp. 71-87
  10. ↑ Retallack: Rocks, views, soils and plants at the temples of ancient Greece. In: Antiquity. Volume 82, 2008, pp. 640-657
personal data
SURNAME Retallack, Gregory
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Retallack, Gregory John (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian geologist and paleontologist (paleobotanist)
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Hobart , Tasmania