User:David Kernow/Edward Tozer

Royal Society of Canada, Willet G. Miller Medal 1979 - Edward T. Tozer

Dr. Tozer's work in marine Triassic stratigraphy and palaeontology of Canada and Western North America, Mesozoic and Tertiary stratigraphy and structure of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and biochronology of the marine Triassic rocks of the globe has gained him an outstanding national and international acclaim. As early as 1962, with R. Thorsteinsson, he was awarded the Medal of Merit of the Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists. This was for his pioneering fieldwork and office research on the Mesozoic and Tertiary stratigraphy and structure of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago which resulted in the first comprehensive synthesis of these aspects of the geology of this previously all but unknown region of northern Canada. He has lectured extensively on this subject and, because of his exceptional understanding of Mesozoic and Tertiary geology of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Dr. Tozer was commissioned to compile these sections of the chapter dealing with the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in the 1970 edition of Geology and Economic Minerals of Canada. The pioneering and at the same time fundamental nature of Dr. Tozer's contributions to the Mesozoic and Tertiary stratigraphy and structure of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago is too well known to every arctic geologist the world over to go into further detail concerning them.

Dr. Tozer's record as a Triassic palaeontologist and biochronologist is just as distinguished. Building on the research of the late Dr. F.H. McLearn, he published a series of papers and memoirs on the Triassic marine faunas and biostratigraphy of western and arctic Canada which have made our Triassic system one of the best known in the world. This has made the Canadian Triassic one of the most important standards of reference for global biochronological correlation.

Dr. Tozer's palaeontological stratigraphical studies of the Canadian Triassic and extended comparative studies abroad laid the groundwork for preparation of fundamental publications on the standard for Triassic time and the biostratigraphic classification of the marine Triassic of North America. The sum total of his published research has made Dr. Tozer one of the foremost Triassic specialists of our generation. Among his Triassic publications The Standard for Triassic Time must be singled out as the most fundamental contribution in the field. Starting with a thorough synthesis of the faunal sequence of western and arctic Canada this work produces what amounts to the first detailed practically workable intercontinental zonal subdivision of the Triassic system. Unlike its partly to largely hypothetical predecessors, this zonal scheme is based largely on the actually observed stratigraphic relationships of individual ammonite and pelagic pelecypod faunas and is comparable in its refinement to the zonal sequences long available for the Jurassic and Cretaceous systems. The recently completed monumental work on the Canadian Triassic ammonite faunas provides a full palaeontological documentation of the Canadian zonal sequence forming the principal anchor of this global biochronological standard of the Triassic. The work is now in press.

Dr. Tozer has been at the forefront internationally in stratigraphic nomenclature, the Triassic system, the definition and delimitation of Triassic stages and substages on a global scale, as well as in the Geological Correlation Programme. Not to be forgotten are, finally, Dr. Tozer's contributions to the knowledge of late Cretaceous and early Tertiary non-marine molluscan faunas and the stratigraphy of the western Prairie provinces. His principal publication on the subject remains one of the most important sources of information on the subject eighteen years after its publication. Dr. Tozer has truly earned the Willet G. Miller Medal.