AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BOB SLOAN, April 1996 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT EVAN SLOAN INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................1 ...SINCE I LEARNED TO READ.................................................................1 CHILDHOOD.........................................................................................................1 COLLEGE...............................................................................................................6 DEATHS OF PARENTS......................................................................................11 SHOOTING...........................................................................................................12 NATIONAL GUARD CAREER..........................................................................17 SALLY ANN CRIPPA SLOAN, Always Exciting, Never Boring.....................21 THE SUMMER OF 1953......................................................................................23 KIDS.......................................................................................................................25 GENEALOGY.......................................................................................................27 ANKLE AND CONSEQUENCES, OTHER HEALTH PROBLEMS..........29 CULTURAL INTERESTS...................................................................................30 HONORS AND AWARDS..................................................................................32 PETS.......................................................................................................................32 SPECIES NAMED FOR ME...............................................................................34 MINNESOTA GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY ........................................................34 DEMOCRATIC FARMER LABOR PARTY.....................................................35 AAUP......................................................................................................................35 HOBBIES, CRAFTS, SKILLS, AND THINGS .......................................37 1 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BOB SLOAN, April 1996 TRAINS, AND OTHER MODELS....................................................................37 NARROW GAUGE CONVENTIONS..............................................................39 CARS.......................................................................................................................39 CAMERAS.............................................................................................................42 HOUSES ................................................................................................................42 FLYING.................................................................................................................44 COMPUTERS .......................................................................................................48 HYPERCARD .......................................................................................................48 RESEARCH.........................................................................................................50 CAMPING AND FIELD GEOLOGY................................................................50 GEOLOGY OF SOUTHEASTERN MINNESOTA ........................................62 SOUTHEASTERN MINNESOTA AND CONODONTS .............................52 1972 SUMMER TROUBLES................................................................................94 MULTITUBERCULATES...................................................................................70 CHINA...................................................................................................................70 RETURN TO THE ORDOVICIAN..................................................................72 TRILOBITES ........................................................................................................73 TEXTBOOK..........................................................................................................74 HOW I PLANNED MY RESEARCH................................................................75 THE FUTURE OF PALEONTOLOGY............................................................75 CRETACEOUS SEA LEVEL CHANGES .........................................................77 THE ECOLOGY OF THE CRETACEOUS - TERTIARY TRANSITION..77 DINOSAUR EXTINCTION...............................................................................78 PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIPS................................................79 2 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BOB SLOAN, April 1996 TEACHING FUNCTIONS.................................................................................79 PUBLIC SERVICE................................................................................................83 EUROPEAN TRIPS.............................................................................................83 1990 ALASKA TRIP ..............................................................................................85 CONVENTIONS & FIELD TRIPS...................................................................86 THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA.....................................................88 PRESIDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA...........................88 THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY.............................................................89 THE REMODELING OF PILLSBURY.............................................................91 TEST SCAMS .........................................................................................................91 DEPARTMENT HISTORY................................................................................92 THE 1972 POLICE RIOT....................................................................................99 HISTORY OF PALEONTOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA ......................................................................................................................................99 MY CAREER IN PALEONTOLOGY..............................................................100 PUBLICATIONS............................................................................................ 101 REPORTS.............................................................................................................107 GENEALOGICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY of Robert E. Sloan...............................107 MODEL RAILROAD BIBLIOGRAPHY of Robert E. Sloan..........................107 3 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BOB SLOAN, April 1996 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT E. SLOAN INTRODUCTION At the time I write this (August 1995 to April 1996) I am a full Professor of Geology, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who has taught geology to some 18,000 students, trained some 3000 people to shoot, collected many hundreds of thousands of fossils, written some 90 professional papers, 4 books, 80 articles on narrow gauge railroad history and model railroading, and 10 pieces of teaching software. I have produced 13 Ph.D. students, most of whom are now professors themselves and 17 master’s students who are professional geologists. I will teach at the drop of a hat, usually without notes, and usually by telling stories. I have never been bored since I learned to read. I have been married to the same very exciting woman for 42 years and have two daughters, two nieces and two nephews. I will not have any grandchildren, so I will be remembered only professionally, by my students and my nieces’ and nephews’ children. I have been very pleased with my choice of paleontology as a career, it isn’t everyone who has gotten to do as an adult just what he wanted to do as a child. I was blessed with high intelligence, a great memory, both verbal and visual, developed fully three-dimensional thinking, became a story teller of some renown, and so have had some success in my chosen career. While retyping my great grandfather Evan Wiggle’s autobiography, I decided it was time to write my own. It is for several uses: some of it is for my family and the endless detail about new and valuable fossils may bore them, but it is also for my colleagues at the University of Minnesota to give a record of events that otherwise will disappear. The family stuff may bore them. I have been interested in the evolution of mammals and have studied, in particular, the late Cretaceous and Paleocene fauna of Montana. I have also investigated factors leading to the extinction of dinosaurs. I am an acknowledged authority on Paleocene terrestrial stratigraphy in North America. I maintain a long-term interest in the stratigraphy and faunas of the Ordovician of southeastern Minnesota. Currently, I am investigating the biostratigraphy, evolution, and extinction of the trilobites of the Ordovician of the Upper Mississippi Valley region My mind is analytical. It works in ways it appears many of my students’ simply cannot. As an example, when I would design a locomotive kit, I would carefully construct the entire locomotive in my mind, going through every single operation mentally before I even started drawing parts or writing instructions. I mentally saw every single stage in the construction, and used that to help design the parts so that others would not have problems with the kit. Having completed the order of operations, I would then write the instructions even before I got the finished parts back from my producers. I very rarely had to revise them after the parts arrived and I built the pilot model. The same thing applies to my habit of lecturing without notes. I have the entire course