Adolf Seilacher

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Adolf Seilacher
Otto Heinrich Schindewolf

Adolf "Dolf" Seilacher (24 February 1925 – 26 April 2014) was a German palaeontologist who worked in evolutionary and ecological palaeobiology for over 60 years.

Lagerstätten and the Ediacaran biota.[2][3][4][5][6]

Career

Seilacher worked for his doctorate under

Otto Heinrich Schindewolf, at the University of Tübingen. He was also influenced by local palaeontologist Otto Linck. He served in World War II and resumed his studies at Tübingen, corresponding with the French ichnologist, Jacques Lessertisseur
. Gaining his doctorate in 1951 on trace fossils, Seilacher moved to the University of Frankfurt (1957) and then the University of Baghdad before taking up a chair in palaeontology in Göttingen. He returned to Tübingen in 1964 as the successor to Schindewolf. After 1987 he held an Adjunct Professorship at Yale University.

Significant work

Seilacher's publications are numerous (well over 200) and cover a range of topics. His studies on

David Raup, in 1969). Much of this work is summarized together with new material in Trace Fossil Analysis (2007).[7]

In 1970 he announced his programme of "Konstruktions-Morphologie" where he stressed the importance of three factors in determining the form of organisms: ecological/adaptive aspects; historical/phylogenetic aspects; and architectural/constructional aspects. The latter two factors are important sources of

biological constraints; both acknowledging that both history and constructional principles place limits on what may be achieved in at least the short term of evolution. Such a view was influential on later workers such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, such as their famous paper on "spandrels
" that criticized panadaptionist accounts of evolution and form.

Dickinsonia fossil described as a "pneu" structure with chambers inflated like a quilted air mattress

Seilacher's interest in

pneu structures. These are fluid-filled structures under tension whose form is broadly determined by the need to distribute the tension across the surface. Seilacher may thus be squarely considered to be a structuralist.[8][9]

Seilacher coined the term

fossils with exceptional preservation and/or concentration).[10] One of his 1985 papers on Lagerstätten proposed a scheme for their classification that went on to become widely accepted. Much of his work has been concerned with preservation and taphonomy
in general.

His most controversial contributions were in his work on the

xenophyophores, i.e. large rhizopodal protists. He appeared in the film Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, going on a dive on the DSV Alvin to investigate modern analogues of the trace fossil Paleodictyon
.

Awards

References

  1. PMID 24848054
    .
  2. ^ "Adolf Seilacher starb am Samstag im Alter von 89 Jahren - Hochschule". Schwäbisches Tagblatt. Retrieved 2014-04-30.
  3. S2CID 198144625
    .
  4. ^ Briggs, D. E. G. (2005). Seilacher on the science of form and function. In Evolving form and function: fossils and development. Proceedings of a symposium honoring Adolf Seilacher for his contributions to paleontology, in celebration of his 80th birthday, pp. 3–24 [includes a bibliography of Seilacher up to 2005].
  5. ISBN 978-3-540-47225-4
    .
  6. ^ Form and Function: A Tribute to Adolf Seilacher Archived 2010-07-03 at the Wayback Machine - Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University
  7. S2CID 129383291
    .
  8. ISBN 978-3-642-76158-4
    .
  9. doi:10.1111/j.1502-3931.1989.tb01332.x
    .
  10. ^ Seilacher, A. (1970). "Begriff und Bedeutung der Fossil-Lagerstätten: Neues Jahrbuch fur Geologie und Paläontologie". Monatshefte (in German). 1970: 34–39.
  11. ^ "SEPM Awards". Society for Sedimentary Geology. Archived from the original on 24 November 2012. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
  12. ^ "Crafoord Prize Laureates". The Crafoord Prize. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
  13. S2CID 133121189
    .
  14. ^ "Gustav-Steinmann-Medaille (seit 1938)". DGGV. Archived from the original on 28 February 2018. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
  15. ^ "Lapworth Medal". The Palaeontological Association. Retrieved 12 Oct 2011.
  16. ^ "Otto Jaekel Medaille". Paläontologische Gesellschaft. Retrieved 28 February 2018.
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