THE DISCOVERY OF THE ANKARA MELANGE AND ITS UNSUNG HERO OGUZ EROL

Ankara Melange was discovered by James McCallien and his only doctoral student in the U. of Ankara, Department of Geography, Oguz Erol. Erol was sent out to the Elmadag region to map and McCallien, advised him to get the stratigraphy established first. Erol obtained - not entirely legally - a set southeast of Ankara through a military friend and began mapping. Soon he was frustrated: No sensible sequence seemed present in the region where late Palaeozoic to late Mesozoic sedimentary and mafic and ultramafic rock seemed distributed haphazardly. McCallien could hardly believe his reports and urged him to try harder. Finally he accompanied Erol on a weekend excursion to see his problem. He became similarly baffled! What Erol had reported was true. There was no sequence to be mapped. McCallien then did what to him seemed to be the most sensible course. He advised Erol to go on mapping. Soon Erol began separating blocks and matrix! He noted that Ernst Chaput's previously mapped "Old Elmadagi Series" contained Permo-Carboniferous limestones that did not occur as interbedded l;ayes. Instead, Erol noted, they were in a sheared matrix. He and McCallien began talking about the sheared matrix forming a "plastic medium" in which the blocks had been "churned." They started using terms such as "Elmadagi Boulder Beds" and "mixed series." They realised that it could only be dated by dating its matrix. McCallien later invited his old friend Bailey to see the area. They did so under Erol's guidance and using his unpublished maps. They published their results acknowledging Erol's 'help" but not sharing the credit of discovery with him. Although Erol's thesis was later publisehed in Turkey, the world at large never learned his true contribution. This is a social issue. However, that the melange concept was rediscovered by Erol and McCallien independently of Greenly and that it was to be independently rediscovered twice more later (by Noble in 1941 and by Hsu in 1968) shows that geological discovery is an objective thing independent of the social hangups of the discoverers. Although the efficient market theory does not work in the scientific world owing to limited biological and technological capabilities of the scientists, it is nonsense to claim that social factors have a controlling influence of the development of science within a scientific society.