Raymond Thorsteinsson (1921-2012)

摘要

No name is more inextricably linked with the geology of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago than that of Ray Thorsteinsson. His death in Calgary on 23 April 2012 at the age of 91 brought to a close a career spanning 62 years, including 39 field seasons, devoted to the exploration and study of the Arctic Islands - a record of achievement unlikely ever to be duplicated. ... Ray's encyclopedic knowledge of the history of exploration in the Arctic Islands was gained by close reading of books by, and accounts of, the early explorers. During the 1958 field season, Ray found records and relicts of W.E. Parry (1820) and F.L. M'Clintock (1853) on Melville Island, including M'Clintock's cart that he had abandoned along with scientific specimens and equipment. Particularly memorable for Ray was the finding, in 1958 in the company of Tim [Tozer], of the record of Stefansson's discovery of Brock Island in 1915. Stefansson had named Brock Island after R.W. Brock, Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, which had provided financial support for Stefansson. ... By 1960, Ray and Tim Tozer had assembled sufficient structural and stratigraphic data to define the Sverdrup Basin, which extended through the northern islands of the Archipelago and which contained at least 13 km of upper Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata. Between 1961 and 1986, a total of 176 wells were drilled in search of petroleum in the Arctic Islands, mostly in the highly prospective Sverdrup Basin. Unquestionably it was the work of Ray and Tim that laid the foundation for that extraordinary period of exploration. ... Although regional mapping took up much of his time, Ray was at heart a biostratigrapher. Paleontology was a special passion, in which he displayed extraordinary versatility. On Cornwallis Island he discovered graptolites, important index fossils for the lower Paleozoic, in an unusually complete state of preservation. His detailed studies of their form and evolution gained him an international reputation. When Ray subsequently worked on the upper Paleozoic strata of the Sverdrup Basin, he turned his attention to the fusulinaceans, a fossil group of particular chronologic significance to those rocks. Following that work, he made a radical switch to vertebrate paleontology in order to concentrate on a fish fauna that he had discovered in Silurian and Devonian rocks on Cornwallis and other Central Arctic islands and of which he had amassed a large collection. These fossils were heterostracans, small, primitive, jawless, armoured fish that occupy a place in the lineage of Man's earliest ancestors. Characterization of these forms requires knowledge of their anatomy and Ray learnt the necessary preparatory techniques during a stay at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm in 1965-67. Ray's heterostracan studies were a focus of the later stages of his career and indeed, at the time of his death, he had almost completed a major monograph on this topic - a true magnum opus - that will be published posthumously. In 1992, after 40 years of continuous service with the Geological Survey of Canada, Ray retired, but he continued to work as a Research Scientist Emeritus until a few weeks before he died. The list of honours and awards garnered by Ray for achievements in geology, paleontology, and exploration is long and distinguished