Back to Brazil: UC Geologists Send Fossil Finds on the Road to Rio

A University of Cincinnati fossil collection that -- decades ago -- provided key evidence to support the once-heretical notion that Earth's continents had all been connected to one another will soon serve a new (and renewed) purpose.

Unearthed by distinguished paleontologist Kenneth Caster in Brazil’s Paraná Basin in the 1930s, these ancient seashells preserved in 300 million-year-old rock served to provide crucial evidence in support of the theory of continental drift –– still a very unpopular notion for most Northern Hemisphere scientists in the 1940s, although it was viewed with favor by some geologists working in South Africa and South America.

Indeed, 30 years and dozens of publications later, Caster and his rocky relics helped provide the key evidence that –– together with further discoveries made in the 1960s –– confirmed the extraordinary hypothesis that the continents had all been connected to one another millions of millennia ago.  

Now, almost 80 years after Caster began his research work along South America’s coastlines, his fossil finds will soon find their way home again.

According to David Meyer, UC professor emeritus of geology, “Caster’s prolific 55-year career really helped put UC on the map for groundbreaking geological research, but since several Brazilian paleontologists have shown an interest in borrowing some of the collection recently, it suddenly occurred to my colleague Barry Maynard and me to return the archive collection permanently to its Brazilian origins.”

BOUND FOR BRAZIL

There was never really a doubt about keeping the fossil collections, Meyer said, after he and Maynard coordinated the move with a very excited Luiza Ponciano –– professor of geology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

“We never felt like we were giving away valuable assets, as there is really no monetary value to these collections, just scientific interest,” says Meyer. “And we’re not giving away resources that we could really benefit a lot from here any further so it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Ponciano sent a representative from Brazil to UC’s campus in 2015 to help Maynard and his students carefully pack the collection into 94 boxes on two pallets –– each weighing a total of about 1,000 pounds. The new home of the Caster collections will be the National Museum of Brazil, which is associated with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Maynard commented that it was like stepping back in time to handle these samples and to review Caster’s notebooks and letters. “I’m proud to have helped ‘repatriate’ these collections, and I am pleased that they will be available both to scientists and to historians of science.”

The baseball-sized relics are classified as ancient marine invertebrate fossils consisting of brachiopods, trilobites and mollusks (clams and snails) and some containing fish remains. They are all described as being from the Devonian through Carboniferous periods (385 to 300 million years ago), long before Jurassic dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

And in a country that stretches from the Amazon Basin to the massive Iguaçu Falls, it is unclear how long Brazil’s rich geological resources will be available with its rapid urban construction popping up over many older excavation sites.

“We felt that this was a win-win for both our universities.

They get to permanently display a valuable local collection in their geological museum, continue important university research and we get to free up some much needed space in our archives,” says Meyer.

Several of Caster’s fully cataloged pieces will remain permanently on display in the Cincinnati Museum Center and others are at the Museum’s

Geier Collections and Research Center

where Meyer is an adjunct curator for research.

Geier’s fossil repository is known internationally, primarily for the large collections of local Ordovician fossils, but also include important specimens such as the Brazilian material.

PROOF IS IN THE MERGER

As Meyer reflects on the prolific career of his former colleague he explains that Caster’s Brazilian marine invertebrate fossils will always represent a powerful turning point for supporting the continental drift theories much scorned early in the 20th century. This was a time when a select group of scientists speculated that the Earth’s current continents originated from a single gigantic continent now referred to as

Pangea.

By 1962, scientists finally mapped the ocean floor using sonar technology (echo sounding) and magnetics to explain how sections of Pangea drifted apart over 250 million years ago.

This new data illustrated the importance of plate tectonics to the structure of the ocean floor crust, the mid-ocean ridges where new crust forms and the subduction zones where ocean crust gets recycled –– all resulting in deep ocean ridges that connect the separate continental landmasses we see today.

According to Meyer, the shape and age of the marine fossils Caster discovered in the Paraná Basin of Brazil were the same in chemistry, age and species as what other scientists were finding in southwestern Africa from the same geological period.

Alas, the strong support for the continental drift theory was finally clinched after scientists merged the earlier “fit” theories of Pangea and Caster’s fossil records with the new magnetic patterns of the rocks on the ocean floor.

Meyer states, “It was the ‘idea whose time had at last come’ and is the single most important revolution in the geological sciences of our lifetimes.

“Plate tectonics is to geology as Darwinian evolution is to biology, and to paraphrase the great biologist Dobzhansky:

Nothing in geology makes sense except in the light of plate tectonics [and continental drift].”

Caster, who always joked that he arrived in Cincinnati with the Great Flood, began his 55-year career in 1937, retired in 1978 and passed away in 1992.

“Because of his life’s work on the South American fossils, Caster will remain among the top geologists known internationally and leaves a valuable geological legacy here at the University of Cincinnati.”

The Department of Geology at the University of Cincinnati

is a nationally ranked program with high-caliber faculty and a strong research reputation. We strive to provide our students with the knowledge and expertise necessary to be prepared for future endeavors in academia and employment. Our graduate and undergraduate programs are supported by faculty who perform high-caliber research with reputations that span world-wide. We teach and conduct research in many areas of the geosciences including paleontology, Quaternary geology, geomorphology, sedimentology, stratigraphy, tectonics, environmental geology, and biogeochemistry. Our faculty maintains high-tech laboratories and conduct fieldwork all over the world, with our students involved every step of the way!

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