Erling Dorf
Encyclopedia
Erling Dorf was an American Geologist
. He was born July 19, 1905 and died in April, 1984. He was hired in 1928 as a professor of Geology at Princeton University
. He retired from Princeton in 1974. He was a renowned paleobotanist working on the floras of the Late Cretaceous
and early Tertiary. He was married to Ruth Kemmerer Dorf. They had three sons and a daughter: Thomas Alfred Dorf (1937-1958), Norman Kemmerer Dorf (1939-2007, Robert Erling Dorf (1941- ) and Molly Drejer Dorf (1948 - ).
Probably his best known work today is a comprehensive article on the petrified Yellowstone forests where he reported the presence of conglomerates from stream deposits, breccias from mudflows or landslides, volcanic tuff, from the numerous volcanic events, and lava beds. Professor Dorf theorized that these specimens do not merely represent one entombed forest but rather include trees from 27 separate forests (the most in the world), each stacked on top of the other, layer by layer, to a thickness of 1,200 feet. He explains that the Absaroka volcanism lasted for 15 million years. In that time, there were alternating periods of activity and dormancy. The active periods caused trees to be encased and eventually fossilized. During the ensuing dormancy, new trees grew up on top of the old, only to be encased by the next volcanic activity.
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
. He was born July 19, 1905 and died in April, 1984. He was hired in 1928 as a professor of Geology at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. He retired from Princeton in 1974. He was a renowned paleobotanist working on the floras of the Late Cretaceous
Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous period is divided in the geologic timescale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous series...
and early Tertiary. He was married to Ruth Kemmerer Dorf. They had three sons and a daughter: Thomas Alfred Dorf (1937-1958), Norman Kemmerer Dorf (1939-2007, Robert Erling Dorf (1941- ) and Molly Drejer Dorf (1948 - ).
Probably his best known work today is a comprehensive article on the petrified Yellowstone forests where he reported the presence of conglomerates from stream deposits, breccias from mudflows or landslides, volcanic tuff, from the numerous volcanic events, and lava beds. Professor Dorf theorized that these specimens do not merely represent one entombed forest but rather include trees from 27 separate forests (the most in the world), each stacked on top of the other, layer by layer, to a thickness of 1,200 feet. He explains that the Absaroka volcanism lasted for 15 million years. In that time, there were alternating periods of activity and dormancy. The active periods caused trees to be encased and eventually fossilized. During the ensuing dormancy, new trees grew up on top of the old, only to be encased by the next volcanic activity.
Publications
- Dorf, Erling and Irma E. Webber "Studies of the Pliocene Palaeobotany of California" Contributions to Palaeontology. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication No. 412 (1933)
- Chaney, Ralph Works and Erling Dorf "Ecology of the Tertiary forests of western North America" Proceedings of the Geological Society of America, pp.357, Jun 1934
- Dorf, Erling and John R. Cooper "Early Devonian Plants from Newfoundland" Journal of Paleontology, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 264–270. May, 1943
- Dorf, Erling and Steven K. Fox "Cretaceous and Cenozoic of the New Jersey Coastal Plain" Prepared for the 1957 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America and associated societies." 1957
- Dorf, Erling "Climatic changes of the past and present" American Scientist, vol.48, no.3, pp.341–364, 1960
- Dorf, Erling "The petrified forests of Yellowstone Park" Scientific American, vol.210, no.4, pp.106–112, 1964
- Dorf, Erling “Cretaceous Insects From Labrador I. Geologic Occurrence,” Psyche, vol. 74, no. 4, pp. 267–269, 1967
- Dorf, Erling "The fossil forests of yellowstone park" Science and Children, vol.7, no.6, pp.15–17, 1970
- Dorf, Erling "Early Tertiary fossil forests of Yellowstone Park" from Rock mechanics, the American Northwest. Pennsylvania State University Press, pages 108-111. 1974
- Dorf, E. "Climatic changes of the past and present" in the book, Paleobiogeography from the series (edited by C.A. Ross), Benchmark papers in geology. Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross, Inc., Pages 384-412 (1976)
- Dorf, Erling "Petrified forests of Yellowstone: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho" National Park Service Handbook No. 108 (1980)
Awards and honors
- 1943 - Vice-President, The Paleontological SocietyPaleontological SocietyThe Paleontological Society, formally the Paleontological Society of America, is an international organisation devoted to the promotion of paleontology. The Society was founded in 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland and was incorporated in April 1968 in the District of Columbia...
- A dormitory has been named after him at the Yellowstone-Bighorn Research Association