AASP Primary Records Program

Francine Martin

photo

AASP Newsletter 28(2): p. 7-8, 1995.

FRANCINE LAURE MARTIN
1937-1994

Francine Martin graduated in 1958 from the Free University of Brussels (ULB) with a degree in zoological science, and also obtained her teaching diploma (B.Ed.). The following year she earned the Certificat d'Ethnologie from the Sorbonne, Paris.

From September, 1959 to August, 1964, she taught high school biology, first at the Lycée of Ixelles, and later at the Athénée Adolphe Max of Brussels. This experience was very gratifying for Francine, who always recalled with pleasure the positive relationship she had with her pupils.

In 1965, she returned to research at the Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgiquw, Brussels. Having begun her palynologic research as early as 1966, Francine can rightly be considered a pioneer in this field. She defended her Doctoral thesis, "Les Acritarches de l'Ordovicien et du Silurien belges. Détermination et valeur stratigraphique," in 1968 at the Free University of Brussels (ULB). From that point on, she dedicated her life to the study of Cambrian to Devonian acritarchs, and to lesser extent, chitinozoans.

From the beginning of her scientific career, she showed a particularly modern viewpoint, especially in regards to the biostratigraphic potential of acritarchs, with an awareness, already expressed in the conclusions of her Ph.D. thesis, that "la biozonation des Acritarches pourra un jour doubler celle des Graptolithes." Her papers, brilliant and often unconventional, always included accurate geological documentation, thus testifying to Francine's generosity and constant concern that scientific data and knowledge should be freely shared.

As a consequence of her scientific approach, taxonomic observation of the acritarchs was never a purely morphological enquiry of Dr. Martin. Her interest was focused more on the identification and the precise circumscription of the acritarchs as biostratigraphic markers, on the variability of their shape as a reflection of their state of preservation, on their stratigraphic and geographic distribution, and on the detection of possible reworking.

From 1966 to 1974, Francine principally studied Ordovician and Silurian acritarchs from Belgium. Her papers on the Lower Ordovician acritarchs of the Montagne Noire, France (Martin, 1974) and on the Lower Silurian of Deerlijk, Belgium (Martin, 1973) are very representative of this period. They also reveal another of her areas of interest concerning acritarchs, namely, their paleoecologic value. In addition to her acritarch studies during this time, Francine also contributed to the study of chitinozoans with papers published in 1969 and 1975.

Francine investigated Silurian and Ordovician (and later Devonian) palynomorphs from Belgium until 1985, but as early as 1975, began to broaden her geographic interests to regions outside the French-Belgian area, thus studying, for instance, Ordovician chitinozoans from Canada (Martin, 1975).

An important turning point in Dr. Martin's research occurred in 1978, when she decided to verify her belief in the biostratigraphic potential of acritarchs by using sedimentary successions independently dated by macrofossils and conodonts. She thus embarked on a series of important studies of the Lower Palaeozoic of Newfoundland (often in close collaboration with W.T. Dean for the trilobite-based stratigraphy) which allowed her first to define the characteristic acritarch assemblages of this stratigraphic interval, and then to propose the first informal biozonation extending from the Middle and Upper Cambrian up to the base of the Tremadoc (Martin, 1982). In 1988, this informal biozonation became a refined acritarch biochronological zonation (Martin and Dean, 1988). Given the low provincial differentiation of Cambrian acritarchs, Francine's highly original scheme also proved very fruitful, as demonstrated by the essential confirmation of its validity and its application around the world. These important results led to her election in 1984 as a corresponding member of the IUGS Sub commission on Cambrian Stratigraphy. In 1994, she applied the same acritarch zonation to the Cambrian of Wales (Young et al., 1994).

Dr. Martin was also aware that the time was not yet right for a serious attempt at an acritarch-based biozonation for the Ordovician, owing to an often confused taxonomy, and scanty and frequently contradictory data on the stratigraphic and paleographic distribution of its many species. This was particularly true because this group is characterized by a strong provincialism for this chronological interval. All her work on the Ordovician (acritarchs and sometimes chitinozoans) between 1978 and 1994 had the same goal: recognition and precise definition of possible Ordovician biostratigraphic markers in the North American Province (Canada; 1980-1984), Australia (1982), northern China (1988), and in the area that Francine herself (1982) defined as the Perigondwana Province, an area which incorporates and places in a more modern paleogeographic picture, the "Mediterranean Province" of previous authors. In this way, Dr. Martin came to study the Perigondwanean acritarch assemblages of Newfoundland, Argentina, and Turkey. In 1990, she became a corresponding member of the IUGS Sub commission on Ordovician Stratigraphy.

In addition to her biostratigraphic acritarch studies, Francine was also particularly interested in the problem of palynologically defining the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary. This interest is evident in the work carried out in Alberta, Canada (Dean and Martin 1982, Martin 1992) and in northern China (1984) during her active participation in the Dayangcha International Conference on the Cambrian-Ordovician Boundary.

Throughout her scientific life, Francine Martin also studied the acritarchs of the Silurian, publishing papers from 1966 to 1990. Most of her Silurian studies were centered in Belgium, but they also included Argentina, Austria, Norway, Canada, and England. She followed much the same approach that she used in her Ordovician studies, namely determining the characteristics of the various palynological assemblages, the identification of the most important taxa in the assemblages, and their stratigraphic and geographic distribution. The result was the recognition in 1989 of six informal acritarch "groups" between the Rhuddanian and Pridoli, which correlated approximately to the corresponding graptolite biozones (Martin 1989). Her election as a titular member of the IUGS Subcommission on Silurian Stratigraphy from 1974 to 1992, as Secretary of the same subcommission from 1974 to 1984, and as a corresponding member since 1994, all testify to the importance of these studies.

Dr. Martin had a lifelong interest in the problem of the Ordovician- Silurian boundary, as reflected in the fact that she was a corresponding member of the TUGS Ordovician-Silurian Boundary Working Group from 1979 to 1985. The experience she gained in this field is very clearly expressed in her 1988 10-page paper on Late Ordovician and Early Silurian acritarchs (Martin 1988).

During the years 1981 to 1985, Francine conducted research on the Devonian of Belgium. The results of her work focused mainly on the Frasnian-Famennian boundary interval and are summarized in her 1994 paper "Acritarchs: a review."

The wide ranging and multifaceted scientific experience of Francine Martinis well illustrated by one of her last works, "Acritarchs: a review" (Martin 1994). In that paper, while also addressing non-specialists, she summarizes for specialists, through appropriate examples (Precambrian, Precambrian-Cambrian boundary, Cambrian-Ordovician boundary, Frasnian-Famennian boundary), the role of acritarchs as a biostratigraphic tool. This was one of Francine's favorite works, and one that all of her friends cherish, because it reflects two characteristic traits of her personal style: scientific precision and readability.

Marco Tongiorgi and Anna Di Milia
Pisa, Italy

References