DEVONIAN SEAFOOD FROM THE SHORES OF THE CATSKILL DELTA COMPLEX: 20 YEARS OF RESEARCH INSPIRED BY RICHARD BAMBACH

In 1993, Richard Bambach inspired a resurgence in paleontological research in the Upper Devonian of the Appalachian Basin through a paper in which he described the depositional environment and stratigraphic correlation of the Cloyd Conglomerate. Roderic Brame was in the midst of field studies and research surrounding Devonian and Mississippian rocks in the central and southern Appalachians. While mapping the Brush Mountain quadrangle in Virginia, he collected fossils from the D/M Boundary interval in an attempt to improve stratigraphic correlation. Tom Dutro at the Smithsonian kindly identified the fossils and encouraged him to continue his research at Virginia Tech under Bambach. As the project evolved, Bambach suggested collecting abundance as well as biostratigraphic data. The study doubled the biostratigraphic resolution of the Upper Devonian of southwest Virginia and documented the Frasnian/Famennian extinction. Brame graduated and went to Wright State University, where his graduate students, Amanda Bolt and John Coates, continued the Devonian research. Bolt added 6,000 fossils to the data set and Coates completed a graphic correlation analysis of the data.

Andrew Bush was a fellow student at Virginia Teach and assisted Brame with fieldwork. Bush continued to study the Upper Devonian during his Ph.D. at Harvard and at the University of Connecticut. He and his students have been examining the F/F boundary interval in New York and Pennsylvanian with regard to stratigraphy, paleoecology, and extinction. Hannah Brame graduated from University of Ohio Athens in 2013 and is currently applying paleoecological niche modeling to the Virginia data set.

Richard Bambach instilled in his students an appreciation for quality data that support multiple dimensions of research. The value of these data and the scientific contributions advancing our understanding of paleoecological changes has proven to be far above expectations.