Aretz et al_2011.pdf - ORBi - Université de Liège

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Kölner Forum Geol. Paläont., 19 (2011)
M. ARETZ, S. DELCULÉE, J. DENAYER & E. POTY (Eds.)
Abstracts, 11th Symposium on Fossil Cnidaria and Sponges, Liège, August 19-29, 2011
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Patrick K. SUTHERLAND (1925-2000) - Mentor
Gregory E. WEBB
The University of Queensland, School of Earth Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane Qld 4072,
Australia; g.webb@uq.edu.au
Pat Sutherland
Guilin, China, 1987
Patrick K. Sutherland was born in Dallas, Texas in 1925, and got his BSc in Geology
from the University of Oklahoma in 1946 before working as a stratigrapher in
western Canada with Phillips Petroleum until 1949. He then went to Cambridge
University, England where he received his PhD in Geology in 1952. From there, he
went back to Phillips Petroleum as a stratigrapher in West Texas, but left for an
academic career at the University of Houston in 1953. He moved to the University of
Oklahoma in 1957 and became a professor in 1964, serving in that capacity until his
retirement in 1990. He also served as the Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at
the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (OMNH) from 1961 and the curator of
Earth Sciences from 1975 until his death. Pat was a stalwart member of the
International Association for the Study of Fossil Cnidaria and Porifera (IASFCP),
proudly having attended the first international meeting in Novosibirsk in 1971. He is
still well remembered as a worker on Carboniferous corals and brachiopods, but also Silurian corals,
Palaeozoic reefs and regional stratigraphy. Some of his stratigraphic work was done for the Oklahoma
Geological Survey, the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology and the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and
Mineral Resources. Importantly, he also was an educator, supervising 36 MSc students, mostly in
stratigraphy, and six PhD students and co-supervising another seven MSc students. Apart from his
geological interests, Pat was very knowledgeable about Native American art and was a tireless campaigner
to improve the curation and preservation of such art in the OMNH. He was also a patron of performance
arts with a particular focus on opera and symphonic music; he was President of the OU Theatre/Opera
Guild from 1997-1999. It was during an international trip to attend opera performances in Europe that Pat
contracted the illness to which he succumbed back in Norman in 2000.
Although Pat worked primarily on Carboniferous corals, brachiopods and stratigraphy, he felt that his
best known coral work may have been the Silurian corals of the Henryhouse Formation, southern
Oklahoma (SUTHERLAND 1965). There he erected the Family Ditoecholasmatidae and documented the
biform tabularium in Ditoecholasma, a feature that was later shown to be of great significance in
laccophyllid corals by WEYER (1972). However, Pat published significant work on Carboniferous corals in
British Columbia, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas as well as British heterocorals. He was particularly
interested in Petalaxis and in intracolonial variation in colonial rugose corals. The rugose coral genus
Sutherlandinia WEYER, 1972 was named after Pat, and Pat also had a tabulate coral, Sutherlandia COCKE &
BOWSHER, 1968 named for him. Of course brachiopod workers also consider Pat to be one of their own. He
did significant work on Pennsylvanian brachiopods in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Much of
Pat’s paleontological work was focused on biostratigraphy and his regional stratigraphic studies in
Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas are still highly valued. His integrated stratigraphy papers (e.g.,
SUTHERLAND 1988) are still generating citations in 2009 and 2010 (according to the ISI Web of Science
database) and the guidebooks to stratigraphy in Oklahoma and Arkansas that he edited (SUTHERLAND &
MANGER 1977, 1979; SUTHERLAND 1982) are as invaluable today as when they were first printed.
I first knew Pat as my undergraduate lecturer in stratigraphy and biostratigraphy, my Senior Honours
supervisor and then as my MSc supervisor at the University of Oklahoma in the USA. Pat remained my
mentor, colleague and good friend until his death in 2000. As a mentor, Pat was instrumental in guiding me
into the field of fossil corals, ancient and modern reefs, and carbonate sedimentology/stratigraphy in
general. I had previously had a fascination with echinoderms, but he quickly won me over to corals. Every
time I now walk on the Great Barrier Reef or in the fossil reefs of the Canning Basin, Western Australia, I
think about what a big debt I owe him for that. Reflecting on Pat as a mentor, I realise I owe him for many
things.