Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn
Elso Sterrenberg Barghoorn (* June 30, 1915 in New York City; † 27 January 1984) was an American paleontologist ( paleobotany ). He was an internationally recognized expert on Precambrian algae fossils. He found some of the oldest fossils ever and extended the time scale known fossil record of about 650 million years ago in the 1950s to 2 billion years. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Bargh. ".
Life and work
Barghoorn, who grew up in Ohio, graduated from Miami University (Bachelor 1937) in Ohio and then Botany at Harvard University, where he received his doctorate in 1941 at the plant anatomists Irving W. Bailey. As a post-doctoral researcher, he conducted research in the Botanic Garden of Harvard University in Cienfuegos, Cuba. After five years at Amherst College in 1941, where his interest in paleobotany the study of a collection of fossils from the Tertiary of Vermont by Edward Hitchcock awoke, he returned to Harvard, where he became in 1946 professor of paleobotany. He was Fisher Professor of Natural History and curator of the palaeobotanical collection of the University in the Gray Herbarium.
Barghoorn discovered in the 1950s fossil cyanobacteria colonies on Lake Superior ( Gunflint Iron Formation, Ontario ), which were about two billion years old. Previously, he had received in 1950 ( about Robert Shrock ) the geologist Stanley Tyler (Professor at the University of Wisconsin ) shiny black rock samples from Michigan and Canada, he should investigate as paleobotany expert on carbon content. The surrounding rock ( shale and chert ) also contained amber- like inclusions and footprints in concentric fan shape reminded Barghoorn to the recent blue-green alga Rivularia. 1953 finally got Barghoorn of Tyler specimens with well-preserved microfossils ( cyanobacteria and iron oxidizing bacteria ) from Lake Superior.
After Barghoorn and Tyler's breakthrough 1954, did nothing for a long in this area, but their results were confirmed in the 1960s. Tyler died in 1963 and Barghoorn was embroiled in a priority dispute with Preston Cloud, who was so settled that both their results published in 1965. Finds at Alice Springs ( Bitter Springs Formation) were added, which were about as old as the Gunflint Formation.
In the 1960s he discovered fossils, which were another billion years older and 1977 with Andrew Knoll 3.4 billion years old fossils in South Africa. He was thus evidence for the origin of life on Earth at the earliest possible time immediately after environmental conditions existed that allowed life at all.
He was also interested early in the investigation of extraterrestrial life and participate in a published 1981 report to the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Science ( Origin and Evolution of Life - Implications for the Planets: A Scientific Strategy for the 1980s, Washington DC 1981 involved was also Lynn Margulis ).
In 1967 he was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. In 1972 he was awarded the Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal.
His doctoral include J. William Schopf and Alfred Traverse.
He was married three times and had two sons from his first marriage, one of which ( Steven Barghoorn ) vertebrate paleontologist was.
Writings
- The oldest fossils, Scientific American, May 1971