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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184
William J. SANDO (1927-1996) – Mentor
Gregory E. WEBB 1 & Tetsuo SUGIYAMA 2
1 School of Earth Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia; g.webb@uq.edu.au
2 Department of Earth system Science, Fukuoka University, Fukuoka 814-0180, Japan;
sugiyama@fukuoka-u.ac.jp
Bill Sando and Tetsuo Sugiyama on the
hill near Asby Scar, Northern England
during the pre-excursion of IASFCP
Symposium, 1991.
William J. SANDO, or Bill as we mostly knew him, was an
expert on the Mississippian corals and stratigraphy of the
western United States and a long-term supporter of the
International Association for the Study of Fossil Cnidaria and
Porifera (IASFCP), having attended the initial First
International Symposium in Novosibirsk in 1971 and being
reasurer and co-editor of the Proceedings volume for the 4 th
International Symposium in Washington, D.C. in 1983. Bill
was born in Washington, D.C. in 1927 and following a brief
stint in the United States Naval Air Corps he received B.A.,
M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from Johns Hopkins
University in Maryland. After a short research fellowship at
the University, he took up a position at the United States
Geological Survey (USGS) in 1954 and remained there until
his retirement in 1993. During his tenure he commonly
represented the USGS at IASFCP meetings and also at the International Congress of Carboniferous
Stratigraphy and Geology. Bill published more than 100 research papers on topics as broad as
Mississippian coral systematics, biostratigraphy, palaeobiogeography, palaeobiology, stratigraphy,
geological history/regional geology, palaeokarst and even pseudofossils. Fifty-five of those papers dealt
specifically with fossil corals. He also published 12 guidebooks and wrote 25 contributions for Fossil
Cnidaria, the newsletter. While Bill served the USGS in a variety of capacities, he was particularly proud of
his editorial duties and of having initiated and edited the USGS series: Shorter Contributions to Paleontology
and Stratigraphy. Following his official retirement, Bill maintained a vigorous research presence at the USGS
as Geologist Emeritus and Research Associate of the Smithsonian Institution until 1996 when sadly he took
his own life after a prolonged illness and long-term battle with depression. It was a major blow not only to
the collective knowledge base of Mississippian corals and stratigraphy of the western United States, but
also to the many young coral workers that Bill at one time or another took under his wing.
Bill SANDO’S name will forever be linked with the coral genera Aulina, Lithostrotionella, and Ankhelasma
and he won an award for best paper in the Journal of Paleontology for his 1961 paper on the latter genus
(SANDO 1961, J. Pal. 35:65-81). Thirty-six years later his last paper won an Honourable Mention in the same
journal for a coral-based investigation of Mississippian latitudinal diversity gradients (WEBB, SANDO &
RAYMOND 1997, J. Pal. 71:780-791). The application of corals to solve broader stratigraphic and regional to
global tectonic problems was a hallmark of Bill’s work. He and Wayne BAMBER combined to produce the
coral-based biostratigraphic zonation of the Mississippian System in western North America, but he also
provided biostratigraphic correlations for Pennsylvanian strata. Many of his works integrated his coralbased
observations into larger concepts of basin development, sequence stratigraphy and carbonate
factories to produce integrated geological histories for the western United States. In later years he grew
increasingly concerned about the decline of coral workers and palaeontology as a field and began to
investigate databases and other new ways of exploring and using corals and stratigraphy. He was very
proud to be a scientist serving the needs of society, and had a distinguished record of service, but he
sometimes regretted not being a university academic, so that he could have a greater impact on students.
However, he made up for it by mentoring many younger colleagues both in the US and internationally.
Two of those colleagues authored this abstract.