Thomas Stanley Westoll

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Thomas Stanley Westoll , called Stanley , (born July 3, 1912 in West Hartlepool , † September 19, 1995 in Newcastle upon Tyne ) was a British paleontologist . He was a professor at Newcastle University .

Life

Westoll studied from 1929 at Armstrong College, later Newcastle University. In 1932 he received his bachelor's degree in geology there and in 1934 he received his doctorate on fossil fish of the Permian in Great Britain. As a post-doctoral student , he studied fossil fish in Europe and North America (with a DSIR Senior Research Fellowship and an 1851 Exhibition Research Fellowship). In 1937 he became a lecturer in geology at the University of Aberdeen . He became a professor in Newcastle in 1948 (JB Simpson Professor at King's College) and was in charge of the Faculty of Geology in 1948 until his retirement in 1977. Even in retirement, he continued to research as a Leverhulme Fellow.

Early work involved the Cosmin land cover of scales and bones of the head of Osteolepis and Dipteris , which also helped to clarify their taxonomy. He studied the evolution of lungfish and coelacanth , the development of the fins of Placodermi and wrote a fundamental monograph on Haplolepidae (an extinct family of bony fish from the Upper Carboniferous) which, after the laudation of the Royal Society when it was admitted in 1952, set a new standard in taxonomy fossil fish continued. In addition to his work on fossil fish, he made important contributions to the phylogenetic development of the palate and middle ear, to the early development of the tetrapods and their limbs and of Captorhinidae . He was also an experienced geologist and dealt with geological and stratigraphic issues, for example the Silurian-Devonian boundary and the stratigraphy of the Old-Red sandstone, particularly on the Moray Firth and Caithness .

He first described Eusthenopteron traquairi (1937) in the frasnium of Elgin (Moray) in Scotland and introduced the order Rhizodontiformes with Andrews . The fossil genus of Fleischflossern Westollrhynchus and Palaeonisciformes genus of Westollia is named in his honor.

Westoll was a fellow of the Royal Society (from 1952 and 1966 to 1968 in their council), the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1943) and the Geological Society of London , of which he was president from 1972 to 1974. He was an honorary member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (1976). In 1968 he received the Murchison Medal , in 1977 the Clough Medal of the Edinburgh Geological Society and in 1978 the Linnaeus Medal . 1966 to 1968 he was President of the Palaeontological Association . In 1979 he received an honorary doctorate (LLD) in Aberdeen.

Alick Walker is one of his students .

literature

  • C. Patterson, RA Fortey: Thomas Stanley Westoll. 3 July 1912--19 September 1995: Elected FRS 1952, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 45, 1999, p. 531

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personal data
SURNAME Westoll, Thomas Stanley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH West Hartlepool
DATE OF DEATH September 19, 1995
Place of death Newcastle upon Tyne