LOST IN THE COLLECTIONS: DUNN’S SILURIAN FORAMINIFERA AND BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC CORRELATION

Paul Heaney Dunn (1895-1967) was awarded his PhD in 1932 at the University of Chicago under Carey Croneis (1901-1972) —though his final dissertation would not be completed until 1942, despite Croneis’ reminders to "finish your thesis so I can get it off my desk." In 1934, Mississippi State College hired Dunn as the Acting Head of the Department of Geology, where he would serve until his 1962 retirement.

Dunn focused his dissertation research on Silurian material, collected by J Harlen Bretz (1882-1981) and Jerome Fischer (1886-1988) from the Chicago and Joliet, Illinois regions. He concentrated on agglutinated foraminifera. In 1933, Dunn expanded the geographic area of Silurian samples to include Tennessee through a National Research Council Grant-in-Aid. In 1955, he received a Geological Society of America grant to continue his research on the biostratigraphic correlation with foraminifera. In his application, Dunn wrote that “I feel that I must complete this Silurian problem in the near future, or it may never be completed in my lifetime.”

Although Dunn did not complete the Silurian problem, he recorded details for his samples, and saved his personal correspondence and notes on his departmental administration. Approximately 40 boxes of archived material reside at Mississippi State University Library. Dunn’s microfossil slides are housed in the university’s Dunn-Seiler Museum’s collections. A note on top of the slide box from the late paleontologist Ernest Russell (1923-2013) noted that the box contained Dunn’s ‘important research.’ Additionally, bags of sediment from Tennessee also have been recovered, as well as macro specimens of Paleozoic fauna, most probably used in paleontology courses. Therefore, the forgotten collections can still provide the data for the Silurian problem.