Wendell P. Woodring

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Wendell Phillips Woodring (born June 13, 1890 in Reading , Pennsylvania , † January 29, 1983 in Santa Barbara , California ) was an American paleontologist and geologist . He was a specialist in tertiary fossils and stratigraphy of the tertiary in California, Central America and the Caribbean.

Life

Woodring lost his father early in 1908 and after graduating from Albright College in 1910 taught at high schools in St. James, Minnesota . From 1912 he studied geology at Johns Hopkins University and received his doctorate there in 1916. The dissertation was on marine shells and Scaphopods the Miocene from Jamaica , which he later expanded to other mollusks (gastropods). His teachers included Charles Kephart Swartz , Harry Fielding Reid, and Edward W. Berry . While working on his dissertation, he worked for the United States Geological Survey . In 1917 he worked for an oil company in Costa Rica and Panama and in 1918/19 he was a volunteer pioneer officer in France. He then worked again for the USGS and was entrusted with the geological survey of Haiti from 1920 to 1922 . He then worked as a geologist for the Tropical Oil Company on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. In 1927 he became professor of paleontology of the invertebrates at Caltech , where his friend Chester Stock was professor of paleontology of the vertebrates.

In 1930 he returned to the USGS and mapped the Kettleman Hills (which also contained significant oil deposits), which became the basis of his elucidation of the stratigraphy of the marine tertiary in California. He also made important contributions to the history of the California Coastal Mountains in the Cenozoic and the deformation along the St. Andrew's Fissure. In 1934 he examined the Palos Verdes Hills near Los Angeles with Milton Bramlette . One of the motivations was the search for oil, but their work then became immediately significant for engineering geologists, as landslides often occurred there. The following geological survey of the Santa Maria area on the coast of Southern California with Bramlette later became important for petroleum geology. During the Second World War he worked from UCLA in Los Angeles for the government as a petroleum geologist in California, after which he was again in Washington DC at the headquarters of the USGS in the department of stratigraphy and paleontology at the National Museum of Natural History . In 1961 he retired from the USGS, but remained scientifically active.

From the end of the 1940s, he dealt in particular with the geology of the canal zone in Panama and the surrounding areas and research into the geological history of the land bridge between North and South America. In addition, he described the tertiary mollusc fauna beginning in the Eocene and the regional stratigraphy. He concluded that the land bridge opened at the turn of the Pliocene to the Pleistocene, and that mammalian faunal exchanges peaked in the early Pleistocene.

In 1948 he was President of the Paleontological Society and in 1953 President of the Geological Society of America . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences . In 1953 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society . In 1949 he received the Penrose Medal and in 1952 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Albright College. In 1977 he received the Paleontological Society Medal and in 1967 the Mary Clark Thompson Medal .

Fonts

  • with JS Brown, WS Burbank: Geology of the Republic of Haiti, Department of Public Works, Port au Prince, Haiti 1924
  • with NM Bramlette, RM Klednpell: Miocene stratigraphy and paleontology of Palos Verdes Hills, California. At the. Assoc. Pet. Geol. Bull. 20, 1936, pp. 125-159
  • with RB Stewart, RW Richards: Geology of the Kettleman Hills oil field, California; stratigraphy, paleontology, and structure, US Geol. Surv. Prof. Paper No. 195, 1940
  • with Bramlette, WSW Kew: Geology and Paleontology of the Palos Verdes Hills, California, US Geol. Survey Prof. Paper No. 207, 1946
  • with Bramlette: Geology and Paleontology of the Santa Maria District, California, US Geol. Survey Prof. Paper No. 222, 1950
  • Caribbean land and sea through the ages, Geolog. Soc. America Bulletin 65, 1954, pp. 719-732
  • The Panama land bridge as a sea barrier, American Philosophical Society Proc., 110, 1966, pp. 425-433
  • Caribbean land and sea through the ages, in Preston Cloud, Adventures in Earth History, Freeman 1970, pp. 603-616
  • Geology and paleontology of Canal Zone and adjoining parts of Panama: A contribution to the history of the Panama land bridge, US Geological Survey Professional Paper No. 306, 1957 to 1982

literature

  • Ellen J. Moore, Biographical Memoirs National Academy of Sciences, 1992 PDF (780 kB; English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Member History: Wendell P. Woodring. American Philosophical Society, accessed December 11, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Woodring, Wendell P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Woodring, Wendell Phillips (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American paleontologist and geologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Reading , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1983
Place of death Santa Barbara , California