NOTES AND NEWS
IN MEMORIAM JEAN-PAUL COLIN (1948-2013)
BY
DAN L. DANIELOPOL1,4), M. CRISTINA CABRAL2)and PIERRE CARBONEL3) 1)Department of Geology and Palaeontology, Institute of Earth Sciences,
Karl-Franzens-University Graz, Heinrichstrasse 26, A-8010 Graz, Austria
2)Department and Centre of Geology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Campo Grande,
C6, 4o, P-1749-016 Lisbon, Portugal
3)16, rue Mégret, F-33400 Talence, France
Jean-Paul Colin, a leading specialist with ostracods, passed away on 17 Sep-tember 2013 in his house at Cestas, near Bordeaux. He was 65 years old and was actively involved in various projects, mainly related to fossil Ostracoda. The news came out as an immense shock not only for his family but also for us, his friends and colleagues. Many of us met him last in July 2013 during the International Symposium on Ostracoda, the ISO-17, in Rome (fig. 1). This meeting represents the world convention for ostracodologists, bringing together palaeontologists and zoologists. Jean-Paul Colin, as usual, delivered a fascinating key lecture, “Ostra-coda in the past worlds, a case history: South Atlantic “pre-salt” petroleum appli-cations”.
Our colleague and friend will remain in the memory of many of us through his extraordinary capacity to understand the significance of the morphology and distribution of ostracods, especially the fossil ones, with huge importance for petroleum exploration. Below, we offer a short overview of the way Jean-Paul Colin accomplished his career as an ostracodologist. Remembering him is not only a way to honour his qualities as a scientist and as a simple human being, but also to transmit to readers an idea of how important it is for a scientist to have incorporated in his every-day life the common-sense of friendly communication with his colleagues and/or with his students.
JEAN-PAUL COLIN: HIS CAREER
The scientific career of Jean-Paul Colin began in the late 1960s. After he en-rolled at the University of Paris studying geology and palaeontology, he started
4)Corresponding author; e-mail: dan.danielopol@uni-graz.at
Fig. 1. Jean-Paul Colin at the ISO-17 in Rome, July 2013. (Photographed by A. Baltanás.)
to study the stratigraphy and micropalaeontology of the Upper Cretaceous around Saint Cyprien in Dordogne (south-western France). Based on investigations on ostracods, foraminifers, and calcareous algae, he completed his doctoral thesis in 1973 and published in the same year five papers as contributions from his thesis. He continued during the next years with other publications mainly concerning Creta-ceous ostracods from the same area. A list of Jean-Paul Colin’s publications (there are a total of 371 issued contributions and 8 others in-press) is published in Car-bonel et al. (2013). It was during this period that Jean-Paul Colin started his long-term collaboration with Jean-François Babinot, from the University of Marseille. Their first joint publication was about a new genus, Sarlatina (=Fossocytheridea,
see Tibert et al., 2003), a fossil ostracod group from France (Dordogne) and Portu-gal (Babinot & Colin, 1976) which brought important information on the evolution of Cyprideidini in the marine/brackish environment during the Late Cretaceous. In the following 20 years these two specialists published together 26 contributions largely dealing with Mesozoic marine ostracods. As an example, in 1985 they pre-sented a synthesis on the palaeobiogeography of Tethyan Cretaceous marine os-tracods at the 9thISO-meeting held in Shizuoka, Japan (Babinot & Colin, 1988).
2013). The friendship between Jean-Paul Colin and Jean-François Babinot, despite the illness of the latter, remained uninterrupted until the present.
Another long-term cooperation of Jean-Paul Colin with various colleagues from Europe, but also from Japan, Brazil, Iran and Russia, concentrated on the systematics and the evolutionary distribution of the Timiriaseviinae. This latter belong to one of the most important post-Palaeozoic ostracod groups, the Cytheroidea, which commonly occur in the marine environment. Timiriaseviinae, which in fact constitutes a taxon of Limnocytheridae, diversified in non-marine aquatic habitats, starting along with the second era of the Mesozoic until the present day. Because species of this group offer also important biostratigraphic and/or palaeoecological information, Jean-Paul Colin, who was also employed as a geologist for leading international oil companies like ESSO and EXXON, had a steady interest in improving knowledge of them. Starting in 1978 and continued until now, Jean-Paul Colin published repeatedly, most of the time in a collaborative way, an important number of papers on Timiriaseviinae. To some of them we had the pleasure to cooperate, for example: Colin & Danielopol (1978, 1980), Carbonel et al. (1986), Babinot et al. (1996), Colin et al. (1997, 2000, 2012) and Cabral & Colin (1998).
Jean-Paul Colin also enjoyed transmitting his knowledge to other colleagues with whom he also published joint papers. Here are two examples from many: During the 7th European Ostracod Meeting held in Graz, 2011, Jean-Paul Colin
recognized a living ostracod species as belonging to Frambocythere, an extinct genus since 40 million years ago. Immediately, he helped to document this important discovery and a publication was issued one year later under the names of the whole team (Smith et al., 2012).
During recent years, Jean-Paul Colin offered his help and expertise to ostracod researchers and biostratigraphers from various countries, like Brazil, Iran, China, India and Turkey. In cooperation with his Brazilian colleagues, new taxa of ostracods were described and new insights into Brazilian geology were accordingly provided (e.g., Do Carmo et al., 2012; Poropat & Colin, 2012a, b), and a few other articles are in preparation.
With his wide knowledge of ostracod systematics, biostratigraphy and palaeo-biogeography, Jean-Paul Colin was predestined to teach these subjects to younger students. In 2009 he became an associate researcher at the University of Lisbon, where he also gave courses. Additionally, he taught micropalaeontology in France at ENSEGID-Bordeaux, in Brazil at PETROBRAS, PETROCI, UNISINOS, and the University of Brasília. A young ostracod student who profited from Jean-Paul Colin’s expertise, wrote to one of us recently: “. . . the sudden death of Jean-Paul was for me and for my South American colleagues a strong shock. We had in him a friend and a teacher that not only was able to motivate our work but also
to criticise it”. Considering this latter activity, we should mention that Jean-Paul Colin was acting in the editorial boards of several periodicals and series, such as “A Stereo Atlas of Ostracod Shells”, “African Geosciences Journal”, “Notebooks on Geology”, “Annales de Paléontologie”, “Open Journal of Paleontology”, “Pale-ontology Journal”, “Revue de Micropaléontologie”. He was a very meticulous and appreciated editor of the manuscripts offered to these journals.
Jean-Paul Colin also was a wonderful organizer of scientific meetings. Partic-ipants to the annual “Réunion des Ostracodologistes de Langue Française” will remember some of these meetings, like the jubilee event, held in Saucats, 2004, or the 24th, held in Geneva, 2012, and dedicated as a homage to Henri J. Oertli.
Synthetic publications dealing with various topics of ostracodology profited from the contribution of Jean-Paul Colin, too. A real success was the one pub-lished in 1988 in the special issue of the journal “Palaeogeography, Palaeoclima-tology, Palaeoecology” (Carbonel et al., 1988), which reviewed the ecology and palaeoecology of non-marine ostracods on a broad time-scale, from Palaeozoic to Recent. Jean-Paul Colin participated also with articles, and acted as editor, in two other important publications: “Ostracoda in the Earth Sciences”, a book edited in cooperation with Patrick De Deckker and Jean-Pierre Peypouquet (De Deckker et al., 1988), and the special volume “Cytherissa the Drosophila of Paleolimnol-ogy” edited jointly with Dan L. Danielopol and Pierre Carbonel (Danielopol et al., 1990). Both volumes nowadays are still intensively used by many students.
During the last years, Jean-Paul Colin took the time to write scientific tributes to colleagues who left us, like Yvette Tambareau (Colin & Carbonel, 2008), Emmanuel Grosdidier (Volat & Colin, 2009), Pierre Donze (Bodergat et al., 2010), and Jean-François Babinot (Colin & Carbonel, 2013). Moreover, he reviewed books and/or scientific events dealing with ostracods, or presented various topics dealing with natural sciences for laypersons. This social activity merits mention, because during the last years of his life Jean-Paul Colin invested much energy also in the publication of his scientific data. During the past three years he produced at least 18 contributions annually. One could ask if he wanted to follow Miguel de Unamuno, who wrote in 1916: “Act as if you were to die in order to survive and be eternalized. The end of morality is to give personal human finality to the Universe” (from de Unamuno, 2005).
Without trying to answer the above dilemma, we certainly agree that his intense activity, both scientific and social, should be admired. He remains in our memories as an important scientific personality and in our hearts as a wonderful friend.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are indebted to Marie-Christine Colin (Cestas) who sent us the 2013-version of Jean-Paul Colin’s Curriculum Vitae with the list of his publications, to Angel
Baltanás (Madrid), who offered Jean-Paul Colin’s portrait used in fig. 1. Benjamin Sames (Vienna) and Alan Lord (Frankfurt/Main) are thanked for comments, and the latter also for reviewing the English style. Finally, we also appreciate the help of J. Carel von Vaupel Klein (Bilthoven) in editing the MS to conform to the “Crustaceana” style.
REFERENCES
BABINOT, J.-F. & J.-P. COLIN, 1976. Sarlatina n.g. (Ostracoda), sa position dans l’évolution des Cyprideidini Kollmann, 1960. In: G. HARTMANN(ed.), Proceedings of the 5thInternational Symposium on Evolution of Post-Paleozoic Ostracoda. Abhandlungen und Verhandlungen des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins in Hamburg (N.F.) 18/19 (Suppl.): 161-174.
— — & — —, 1988. Paleobiogeography of Tethyan Cretaceous marine ostracodes. In: T. HANAI, N. IKEYA & K. ISHIZAKI (eds.), Evolutionary biology of ostracodes. Its fundaments and applications: 625-641. (Developments in Palaeontology and Stratigraphy, Elsevier-Kodansha, Tokyo).
BABINOT, J.-F., J.-P. COLIN& Y. TAMBAREAU, 1996. Late Cretaceous non-marine ostracods from Europe: biostratigraphy, palaeobiogeography and taxonomy. Cretaceous Research, 17: 151-167.
BODERGAT, A.-M., J.-P. COLIN& I. DONZE, 2010. Obituary Pierre Donze (1918-2008). Newslet-ter of Micropalaeontology, 81: 39-40.
CABRAL, M. C. & J.-P. COLIN, 1998. Nouvelles espèces de Limnocytheridae (Ostracodes limniques) dans l’Aptien du Portugal: systématique et paléoécologie. Revue de Micropaléon-tologie, 14: 269-279.
CARBONEL, P., M. C. CABRAL & D. L. DANIELOPOL, 2013. Jean-Paul Colin. Carnets de Géologie [Notebooks on Geology], Brest, Obituary Notice-Jean-Paul Colin: 325-345. http:// paleopolis.rediris.es/cg/Jean-Paul_Colin.pdf
CARBONEL, P., J.-P. COLIN, D. L. DANIELOPOL, H. LÖFFLER & I. NEUSTRUEVA, 1988. The paleoecology of limnic ostracodes, a review of some major topics. In: J. GRAY(ed.), Aspects of freshwater paleoecology and biogeography. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 62: 413-461.
CARBONEL, P., J.-P. COLIN, D. L. DANIELOPOL& L. LONDEIX, 1986. Kovalevskiella (Ostracoda, Timiriaseviinae), genre à mode de vie benthique depuis l’Oligocène. Son adaptation à la vie interstitielle. Geobios, 19: 677-687.
COLIN, J.-P., M. C. CABRAL, F. DÉPÊCHE& W. METTE, 2000. Sinuocythere n. gen. (Ostracoda, Limnocytheridae, Timriaseviinae), a new genus of limnic ostracode from southern Tethyan Middle and Upper Jurassic. Micropaleontology, 46: 123-134.
COLIN, J.-P. & P. CARBONEL, 2008. Yvette Tambareau (1938-2008). Géochronique, 106: 13. — — & — —, 2013. Jean-François Babinot (1940-2013). Cypris, 30: 54.
COLIN, J.-P. & D. L. DANIELOPOL, 1978. New data on the systematics of the Limnocytheridae (Ostracoda, Cytheracea). Geobios, 11: 563-567.
— — & — —, 1980. Sur la morphologie, la systématique et l’évolution des ostracodes Timiriase-viinae (Limnocytheridae). Paléobiologie Continentale, 11: 1-52.
COLIN, J.-P., Y. TAMBAREAU & V. KRASHENINNIKOV, 1997. An early record of the genus Cytheridella Daday, 1905 (Ostracoda, Limnocytheridae, Timiriaseviinae) from the Upper Cretaceous of Mali, West Africa: palaeobiogeographical and palaeoecological considerations. Journal of Micropalaeontology, 16: 91-95.
COLIN, J.-P., H. VAZIRI-MOGHADDAM, A. SAGARI & S. SHARIAI-GRAII, 2012. Presence of Frambocythere gr. tumiensis (Helmdach), Ostracoda, in the Upper Maastrichtian of the Zagros Mountains, Iran, a new relay between southern Europe and the Far East. Carnets de Géologie, Mémoire 2012/01 (CG2012_M01): 133-191.
DANIELOPOL, D. L., P. CARBONEL& J.-P. COLIN(eds.), 1990. Cytherissa the Drosophila of paleolimnology. Bulletin de l’Institut de Géologie du Bassin d’Aquitaine, 47-48: 1-310. DEDECKKER, P., J.-P. COLIN& J.-P. PEYPOUQUET(eds.), 1988. Ostracoda in the earth sciences:
1-302. (Elsevier, Amsterdam).
DEUNAMUNO, M., 2005. Tragic sense of life. The project Gutenberg eBook (English translation of the 1916 Spanish version). Available online at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14636/14636-h/ 14636-h.htm
DO CARMO, D. A., J.-P. COLIN, P. H. P. HIDALGO, P. MEIRELES, L. L. C. BERBERT -BORN & C. M. DEALMEIDA, 2012. Reassessment of the genus Sergipella Krömmelbein, 1967 (Ostracoda, Trachyleberididae), uppermost Aptian-Albian of Brazil and West Africa: taxonomy and paleogeograpic distribution. Revue de Micropaléontologie, 55: 3-15.
POROPAT, S. & J.-P. COLIN, 2012a. Early Cretaceous ostracod biostratigraphy of eastern Brazil and western Africa: an overview. Gondwana Research, DOI:10.1016/j.gr.2012.06.002.
— — & — —, 2012b. Reassessment of the Early Cretaceous non-marine ostracod genera Hourcqia Krömmelbein, 1965 and Pattersoncypris Bate, 1972 with the description of a new genus, Kroemmelbeincypris. Journal of Paleontology, 86: 700-720.
SMITH, R. J., I. LEE, Y. G. CHOI, C. Y. CHANG & J.-P. COLIN, 2012. A Recent species of Frambocythere Colin, 1980 (Ostracoda, Crustacea) from a cave in South Korea; the first extant representative of a genus thought extinct since the Eocene. Journal of Micropalaeontology, 31: 131-138.
TIBERT, N. E., J.-P. COLIN, R. M. LECKIE& J.-F. BABINOT, 2003. Revision of the ostracode genus Fossocytheridea Swain and Brown, 1964: Mesozoic ancestral root for the modern eurytopic Cyprideis Jones. Micropaleontology, 49: 205-230.
VOLAT, J.-L. & J.-P. COLIN, 2009. Emmanuel Grosdidier (1934-2009). Géochronique, 112: 18.
First received 10 October 2013. Final version accepted 28 October 2013.
