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Cesare Emiliani Paul F Document generated on 09/27/2021 9:59 a.m. Geoscience Canada The Tooth of Time: Cesare Emiliani Paul F. Hoffman Volume 39, Number 1, 2012 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/geocan39_1clm01 See table of contents Publisher(s) The Geological Association of Canada ISSN 0315-0941 (print) 1911-4850 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this document Hoffman, P. F. (2012). The Tooth of Time:: Cesare Emiliani. Geoscience Canada, 39(1), 13–16. All rights reserved © The Geological Association of Canada, 2012 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ GEOSCIENCE CANADA Volume 39 2012 13 NEW SERIES The history behind the development of some of the fundamental concepts in the geosciences is truly fascinating. Some outstanding characters with brilliant insights have laid the foundations of our discipline. This history has a full cast of characters, and major advances have been made by drinking potions laced with ingenuity, serendipity and happenstance. Hypotheses have come and gone, great debates have raged. You all know Paul Hoffman as a researcher of the highest stature, and he has garnered a host of the most prestigious national and international awards for his research. Paul is also a passionate student and disciple of this history, and as is evi- dent from his photograph, he has lived through many of them! He will contribute a column, aptly entitled Tooth of Time, to each issue of Geoscience Canada. His contri- bution to this issue is the first of many fascinating narratives of how major discover- ies are made, the amazing characters to whom we owe so much, and the importance of mentorship as transformative ideas are handed from generation to generation. Photo credit: Francis Macdonald, 2004. Column The Tooth of Time: Cesare all Linnean names an emphatic Bolog- Turekian recently remarked, “Geo- nese accent in his honour. Only decades chemists are often accused of acting Emiliani after the fact did I begin to appreciate like God. There are good reasons for the historic circumstances of Emiliani’s this.” Paul F. Hoffman 1216 Montrose Ave., Victoria, BC talk in Miami. In 1946, Urey had been asked V8T 2K4 Emiliani studied micropaleon- (by Paul Niggli) after a talk at ETH in tology and published on Cretaceous and Zürich whether it might be possible, Pliocene forams in wartime and post- given that rainwater was isotopically It’s funny how a seemingly minor event war northern Italy. He won a Fellowship lighter than seawater, to distinguish in graduate school can take on deeper to University of Chicago in 1948 and marine and continental carbonates by meaning later on. We had a day to kill after a long drive from Baltimore to was recruited by Harold Urey into his isotopic analysis. Urey did some calcula- Miami through the Deep South. It was research group, which was dedicated to tions and discovered that there was a 1967 and we had long hair. Carbonate realizing the dream that “such a tran- measurable temperature effect to con- sedimentologist Bob Ginsburg had sient physical quantity” as the tempera- tend with. “I suddenly found myself come to Johns Hopkins two years earli- ture of seawater could be faithfully with an isotopic thermometer in my er, bringing Paleozoic limestones back recorded in rocks for a hundred million hands.” he said (2). Not quite. The res- to life in Florida Bay, the Florida Keys years or more (1). The group included olution of their mass spectrometer had and Great Bahama Bank. He had to engineer Charles McKinney (who to be improved by a factor of ten. And spend the day bartering with boat oper- supervised the construction of a dupli- they had to figure out how to extract ators but he suggested we attend a talk cate mass spectrometer to the one CO2 gas from carbonate shells without on forams at the Institute of Marine designed by Al Nier in Minneapolis), contamination from the embedded Science (University of Miami). To be Urey’s graduate student John McCrea organic matter, a problem Epstein honest, I don’t remember much about and Sam Epstein, a postdoctoral solved by a method still used today (3). the substance of the talk, except that chemist with an interest in geology By 1951, Urey’s group had perfected the the shells of one foram species coil to from Winnipeg by way of McGill. Urey, measurement of paleotemperatures in the left where it is cold and to the right a Nobel laureate in chemistry in 1934 ancient carbonates and were able to where it is warm–just like American (age 41), was the most important Amer- show that a 150-million-year old belem- politics. But I remember the speaker, a ican Earth scientist of the 20th century, nite from the Isle of Skye had lived for fast-talking, high-voltage Italian whose remarkable considering that he devoted four winters and three summers at tem- presentation was so charged with con- only a dozen papers and a tiny fraction peratures ranging from 15 to 21°C, and viction that for years afterwards I gave of his career to Earth science. As Karl that the winters grew progressively 14 colder during its lifetime. Urey hoped to form nor invariant over time. Epstein North Atlantic. He observed that test the idea that climate change was and Toshiko Mayeda had shown that indigenous (not reworked) marine responsible for the extinction of the the subtropical surface waters are heavy, fauna, mainly molluscan, occur sparing- dinosaurs, but the results were inconclu- due to net evaporation, while equatorial ly in the tills and abundantly in the strat- sive. Emiliani would take Urey’s pale- waters, estuaries and the Arctic Ocean ified Drift, up to hundreds of feet othermometer in a new direction. (a large estuary) are light. During an ice above contemporary sea level. He also Emiliani reasoned that younger age, the entire ocean becomes heavier in pointed out that the Drift fauna of carbonate would be better preserved proportion to the volume and degree of Scotland more closely resembled his and that the Pleistocene was a logical isotopic depletion of the ice sheets. Arctic collections than those of the target because of large temperature Emiliani was acutely aware that temper- Clyde (7), an inference subsequently changes associated with the ice ages. He ature and ice volume have complemen- confirmed by Edward Forbes (8). The had studied a Pleistocene foraminiferal tary isotopic consequences for first observation created a major stum- section near Bologna and had proposed foraminiferal calcium carbonate, but in bling block for the glacial theory, which a paleoenvironmental proxy based on what proportions? He went to great predicted a large sea-level fall just when foram dimensional variability (prosperi- lengths to show that the saw-tooth the fauna in the lowland Drift indicated ty brings uniformity). In 1951, he sam- changes in the oxygen isotopes of spe- submergence (9). There were no marine pled a Lower Pleistocene section in the cific pelagic forams he observed down- fossils in the Alpine glacial deposits and Palos Verdes Hills of Los Angeles, find- hole correlate with changes in hence the Swiss proponents the glacial ing strong oxygen isotope variations. foraminiferal speciation and size, then theory had no explanation for submer- But correlation with existing ice age the more established proxy for environ- gence, a problem not resolved until long chronology, hopelessly tied to 50-year- mental stress. He studied the depths at after the glacial theory was finally old work on the north slope of the east- which different foraminiferal species accepted (10). Smith’s second observa- ern Alps–Günz, Mindel, Riss, Würm– live as a means of disentangling temper- tion created a problem for climate was impossible. The same year, he ature from ice volume isotopically. He physics. It was then widely assumed that heard a lecture by Hans Pettersson reasoned that temperature change dur- global climate could only get colder describing recent Swedish innovations ing glacial-interglacial cycles was greater over time as the Sun grew dimmer in deep-sea piston coring. Cores from in surface waters than at depth. Deeper- through the loss of radiant heat. the Swedish Deep-Sea Expedition of dwelling species should therefore show Europe was experiencing the last 1947-48 showed quasi-periodic varia- less isotopic change than shallower ones advance of the Little Ice Age, so there tions in calcium carbonate content, if temperature was the main determi- was historical as well as geological (pale- which Gustaf Arrhenius had interpret- nant, but all depths should change in obotanical) evidence for climatic cool- ed in terms of glacial (higher content) lock-step if ice volume was in sole con- ing. The faunal evidence for a geologi- and interglacial (lower content) cycles. trol. He selected four species of plank- cally recent warming implied that cli- Arrhenius numbered the glacial (even tonic forams that live at different depths mate change was bidirectional, a chal- numbers) and interglacial stages (odd and analyzed them independently. Com- lenge to physics that led explicitly to the numbers) counting backward from the paring the down-hole curves, Emiliani experimental demonstration of the so- present interglacial, a scheme later concluded that about 60% of the vari- called greenhouse effect by the Irish- transferred to isotope records.
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