Aretz et al_2011.pdf - ORBi - Université de Liège

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dorothy HILL, A.C., C.B.E.
John S. JELL
University of Queensland; School of Earth Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Qld 4120,
Australia; j.jell@bigpond.com
Dorothy HILL was born in Brisbane on 10 September 1907,
educated at Brisbane Girls Grammar School and University of
Queensland. She completed her PhD at Cambridge University
in 1932, researching there until 1937 as a Fellow of Newnham
College. In that year, she returned to the University of
Queensland where she was to spend the rest of her career
except for war service with the WRANS (1942-1945). Her
brilliant career was marked by inspiring lecturing and
teaching, outstanding palaeontological, stratigraphical and
geological research, very skilled academic administration and
leadership, and generous collaboration with government
geological surveys, and with the petroleum, coal and mineral
industries. She retired in 1973 but continued her research until a few years before her death on 23 April
1997.
This contribution focuses on her coral and archeocyathid research, and her contribution to our
Association for the Study of Fossil Cnidaria and Porifera. Her coral studies started with the collection of a
Carboniferous fauna from Mundubbera, 300 km northwest of Brisbane, when visiting a friend following
her graduation. She began a detailed study of this fauna in Brisbane.
The award of a University of Queensland Foundation Travelling Scholarship in 1930, enabled her to
undertake a PhD at University of Cambridge combining this work with a study of Carboniferous corals of
Scotland. Her time in Cambridge greatly influenced her future career. Her supervisor G.L. ELLES, together
with O.H.B. BULMAN, both graptolite workers, demonstrated how detailed morphological studies through
well-controlled palaeontological sequences could provide refined stratigraphic results. Her coral work was
greatly influenced by Stanley SMITH of Bristol University, the foremost coral specialist at the time, by
fostering her interest in the skeletal structure of corals and the relationship of structural elements and soft
tissue. W.D. LANG of the British Museum (Natural History) whose taxonomic expertise was outstanding
inculcated in her the necessity for taxonomic rigor. H. Deighton THOMAS also of the BM(NH) introduced
her to the value of extensive, well-preserved and curated collections. She also realized that good libraries
were essential for quality scientific research. By the time she left the UK, she had published or had accepted
for publication: a review of the terminology for describing the coral skeleton; her initial paper describing
the microstructure of corals (Silurian cystimorphs); nine taxonomic papers on Silurian, Devonian,
Carboniferous and Permian British and Australian faunas including her major monograph on the
Carboniferous corals of Scotland.
Returning to Australia in 1937, she gained one of the new Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
grants and embarked on a study of the coral-bearing Palaeozoic limestones of Australia. She found the
literature, collections and academic standards in Australia wanting. She built a library of Palaeozoic coral
literature second to none, established well-curated collections amassing over 10,000 thin-sections, and
strove to improve academic standards all her life. She also found that much geological mapping was
needed in Australia before the study of stratigraphy and facies could match the quality of such studies in
UK and Europe. To this end she collaborated with the commonwealth and state geological surveys in their
regional mapping programs.
She published 31 taxonomic papers on Australian Palaeozoic coral faunas aiming to provide the
stratigraphic framework for unraveling Australia’s geological history. In 1943, the first (A re-interpretation of
the Australian Palaeozoic record, based on a study of the rugose corals) of eight papers detailing the stratigraphic
sequences of the faunas was published. She also continued her work on coral microstructure and in 1943
61