AASP Primary Records Program

Satish K. Srivastava

Satish,

I have given the question of "questions" some thought and have told others that what is important to the project is the development of our discipline, particularly those aspects that would be lost because they are not written. Most of the ones I have come up with are pretty sterile and the ones that have interested me most in talking with people are wild stories about palynologists that likely will never be recorded. Like how Aureal Cross got Gerhard and Eva Kremp out of Germany, and how one of the founding members of AASP was rubbed out by the Mob.

I'll give your request some serious consideration before getting back with you, but I'm thinking about questions like these (O.K. Davis, April 25, 2002)

From 1954 to February 1957, I worked in the Forest Research Institute (FRI) of India, Dehradun, as a research assistant, first with H. S. Rao in the Botany Branch's cytology and chromosome study section, then with G. S. Puri on the preparation of his book Forest Ecology of India, and finally in the Silviculture Branch's pine resin-tapping research program to find better resin yields. Rao and Puri both had a PhD in paleobotany under Birbal Sahni and a second PhD, respectively, from Minnesota in genetics and London University in forest ecology. Thus my career began with two distinguished Indian paleobotanists.

Until 1955, all oil exploration in India was restricted to the eastern region by foreign oil corporations such as Assam Oil Company (a subsidiary of Burma Shell) and STANVAC. To fulfill the need for a national enterprise to search for oil, an oil exploration unit was opened in the Geological Survey of India, Calcutta (now Kolkotta) in 1955. In 1956, this unit became the Oil & Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) and was relocated to Dehradun. Although ONGC needed hundreds of geologists, geophysicists, laboratory and technical personnel for an accelerated quest for oil in India's sedimentary basins, my chance for an ONGC job seemed unlikely as my BSc was in botany, chemistry and zoology, not geology.

However, I soon heard that ONGC was hiring people with botanical qualifications. Dr. Dayal, a visiting research scholar from Birbal Sahni Institute working on fossil-woods in FRI's wood anatomy branch, told me that C. P. Varma from the Sahni Institute (a fossil algae specialist with PhD from Lucknow University) had been appointed in ONGC's Palynology Laboratory. Dayal spelled out palynology for me, but was not sure of the spelling. The word was not even in my 1955 Chamber's dictionary. Eventually I found out that palynology meant the study of pollen, but its use in oil exploration was a mystery. I scouted and found that L. P. Mathur, Superintending Geologist, was in charge of ONGC's laboratories. He had worked in Assam Oil Company and had extensive geological experience in oil exploration. He advised me to submit an application to Varma. I did so, emphasizing my pollen knowledge gained in FRI's cytology laboratory. Meanwhile A. K. Ghosh joined ONGC as Palynologist-In-Charge. Eventually, I was appointed as a Junior Technical Assistant (JTA) and joined the laboratory on February 2, 1957. I was 21.

I learned slide preparation, microtomy, and camera lucida techniques in FRI's cytology laboratory and saw pollen during chromosome studies. Then, in addition to examining rock-sample slides at ONGC, I was given projects to prepare modern pollen slides and an annual atmospheric calendar of local pollen-rain. To learn preparation of modern pollen and atmospheric pollen slides, I studied books by Erdtman, Faegri and Wodehouse. I learned other palynological techniques also by reading books available at that time. Then, in May or June 1957, Soviet expert N. D. Mtchedlishvili arrived at ONGC for about a year and we followed her method (heavy liquid) in processing rock samples to recover palynomorphs. Several pollen atlases belonging to Mtchedlishvili became available for identifying palynomorphs. Although Mtchedlishvili knew little English and I knew no Russian, I stole her time here and there and tried to learn her methods by making small talks. She was most gracious in talking with, and teaching, me. At the start of a train trip to Lucknow and Calcutta, Mtchedlishvili noticed that I was nowhere to be seen. Upon hearing that my rank dictated that I should be in 2nd Class rather than with the rest of the group in 1st Class, Mtchedlishvili went barefoot to my compartment, took my luggage, and insisted that I travel in their compartment. The Director of Geology who was traveling with us immediately gave me permission to join the rest of the group. Mtchedlishvili and I exchanged literature until her retirement from the Oil Institute in Leningrad. As far as I know Mtchedlishvili did not travel outside Russia after her visit to India in 1957-1958. Whenever her younger colleagues such as, Bratzeva or Ilyina, attended International Palynological Conferences (IPC), they always brought me her greetings. During the IPC at Houston in 1996, Ilyina told me that Mtchedlishvili had died.

None of ONGC's staff had any experience in stratigraphic palynology applied to oil exploration. I worked under the Palynologist-In-Charge, A. K. Ghosh, who had been registrar at the Bose Research Institute, Calcutta, and was about 53 years old. He had worked and guided research on the palynology of the Vindhyan Series and had submitted his PhD thesis on plant remains in the Vindhyans under Professor S. P. Agharkar, Calcutta University. The age of the Vindhyans is controversial but the uppermost Vindhyans are generally believed to be basal Cambrian and the Upper Vindhyans are correlated with the Salt Range Cambrian strata of the western Himalayas in Kashmir. Unfortunately, Ghosh's external examiner was Professor Birbal Sahni of Lucknow University who had worked on the Salt Range and adversely criticized Agharkar for the thesis. Although Ghosh had to rewrite his thesis, he never resubmitted it, but worked on the Vindhyans for most of his life. The fragmentary plant microfossils of the Vindhyans and the Salt Range could never be reconciled and Ghosh remained in direct controversy with Birbal Sahni. In 1962, I met Professor R. Potonié in Lucknow during his visit to Sahni Institute. Upon hearing that I worked with Ghosh at ONGC, Potonié exclaimed "Oh! Cambrian Ghosh." Potonié was most courteous and his wife, clad in a white chiken-embroidered [of local fame] sari, greeted me graciously and treated me to candies.

Soon I became in Ghosh's good books due to my zeal for publication. I assisted him in preparing his manuscripts and co-authored publications with him. Ghosh had a knack of indulging in controversial problems. I guess he wanted to produce results where others failed. The Krols, exposed as a belt of nappes from east to west in the Himalayas, had tantalized several paleontologists but produced frustratingly few results. In 1959, Ghosh, A. T. R. Raju (an ONGC field geologist-petrologist), and I collected Precambrian to Jurassic samples, including the Krols, from exposures along a mule-track between Dehradun and Mussoorie. This gave me my first taste of field geology. In 1962, Ghosh and I co-authored a paper on the palynology of Krols
[Ghosh, A. K. and Srivastava, S. K. 1962. Microfloristic evidence on the age of Krol beds and associated formations. Proceedings of the National Institute of Sciences of India, 28A(5): 710-717].

This, in short, is the story of how I learned palynology and was introduced to geology. I soon realized that I must learn geology to survive in ONGC.

By 1963, I had published a dozen papers in national and international professional journals. I started exchanging my publications internationally. I wanted to publish to further my career and reduce the necessity of postgraduate education but publishing failed to meet my ambition on both counts. Without postgraduate qualifications, preferably in geology, I had reached the glass ceiling in ONGC. Also my publications created the false impression in fellow workers that I had a PhD. Pierre Legris, Director of the French Institute in Pondicherry, visited my friend Harish Bhatnagar in FRI. When he and Harish came to see me in ONGC, Legris addressed me as Dr. I told him that I was not a PhD, but he remarked "if not today, you will be." Being addressed as Dr. was embarrassing in the social environment of that time. Thus, I made up my mind to find a way to advance my education.

I had to face several obstacles. I was supporting my parents and they objected to my leaving a rather decent job for an uncertain future. Although I was over-age at 25 for an MSc at an Indian university, the head of one botany department agreed to exempt me from the age barrier on the recommendation of his student Harish (my friend in FRI). However, the lack of income for at least two years meant that this could not be a solution. I needed a stipend for the duration of my further education. I began searching for a foreign university that could give me both a stipend and a postgraduate education. I applied in vain to several universities of several countries.

In 1963, on G. S. Puri's recommendation, I received an offer for a position of palynologist in the Geological Survey of Ghana with permission to submit my palynological work conducted there for a PhD thesis at the University of Ghana under Puri's supervision. Although the offer would have solved my financial problem, I was concerned whether a Ghanaian PhD would further my career in India. The offer met vehement opposition from my father. Then, one evening, I happened to meet P. K. Srivastava, a senior geologist in ONGC, on his doorstep. He very cordially invited me in for a cup of tea. During our conversation, I mentioned my dilemma about furthering my education. P. K. Srivastava had recently returned from Canada after taking a geology short course at the University of Alberta under an exchange program between India and Canada. He told me that Chaitanya Singh was about to complete his PhD thesis in palynology under Professor C. R. Stelck at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and suggested that I write to Stelck and Singh for guidance.

The next day I wrote to Stelck giving my educational qualifications and a list of publications with a request that I would need a stipend to meet my financial needs in Canada. Also I wrote to Chaitanya Singh for his guidance in the matter. After a couple of weeks, I received letters from Stelck and Singh on the same day. Stelck had sent me an admission form and wrote that he thought that I could complete a MSc and PhD program at the University of Alberta. He asked me to complete the admission form immediately. Singh wrote that he was not so sure if I would be able to complete any postgraduate program successfully due to my Indian educational background without geology. He added that, after all, no one with only a BSc from India had been admitted and those who came with an MSc could not complete the PhD program. He advised me to apply in countries where a PhD was given on the thesis only without course work. [Singh was the only MSc in geology from Lucknow University who received a PhD from University of Alberta before 1964]. The next day I received another letter from Singh saying that he had met Stelck after mailing me his previous letter and Stelck thought that I could do the postgraduate program. He further added that professors in Canada are demigods and can do what they like, so "welcome to the University of Alberta."

Stelck's letter had not made it clear whether I would receive a stipend. So I wrote to him about it and received his reply that I was guaranteed a stipend of Can$167.50 per month for as long as I was in the postgraduate program. In those days, the Government of India only allowed 70 rupees (Can$14.00) to be taken out of the country. I applied for educational leave from ONGC and was granted two and a half years based on the length of my service. The leave contract included a clause to serve ONGC for at least three years upon my return or pay ONGC 3,000 Indian Rupees.

At this time, my parents were upset about the need to arrange my eldest sister's marriage as is the custom in India. My father and I, the only son, were operable constituents of the family whereas my mother made all the decisions. My sister was married to a Professor of Physics in June 1964. I contributed all my savings from my prior 10 years earnings for the marriage except for airfare to Canada and Can$14. I reached Canada on September 22, 1964.

Everything was different for me in Canada. It was the first time I had traveled outside India. Canada's vast horizon was fascinating, but at the same time intimidating. Three weeks after my arrival in Edmonton, Dr. Stelck, Don Taylor (curator) and I collected three sections in southern Alberta for my MSc thesis. It snowed. Stelck lent me his warm field jacket which came down below my knees. The sleeves even covered my geological hammer. Stelck took my photograph in his j acket using me as a scale on an outcrop. I had to use that photograph in my MSc thesis as that was the only photograph of the outcrop. Anyway, the jacket protected me from the cold. The welcoming and cooperative nature of Canadians made things easy. At the start of my Master's program, I was determined to pass the courses with flying colors. Fortunately I already knew palynology sample processing techniques. With my Indian educational background, I decided to prepare good and complete notes of course lectures and purchased a set of colored pencils to prepare maps, figures and notes for various courses. I had barely finished sharpening my pencils when I was told that mid-term exams were the following week. I tumbled down in all those exams but quickly changed my learning technique, recouped my grades, and did very well by the end of the term. The colored pencils remained unused for my entire postgraduate program.

Dr. Stelck had a Geological Survey of Canada grant for the biostratigraphy of the western interior of Canada and my MSc thesis was to determine the paleoecology of the Lancian mammal-beds of the Edmonton Formation (now Group) by palynology. The Edmonton Formation was rumored to be palynologically barren. Some colleagues advised me to consult Dr. Jack Campbell of the Research Council of Alberta as he had been doing field-work and palynological studies on the Edmonton Formation for several years. I procrastinated, but one day Campbell met me by chance in the hallway and asked the subject of my research. Upon hearing the Edmonton Formation, he brushed me off asking what I would find there and went on his way.

I became scared of losing the research project if the samples were barren. Stories were going around about the difficulties of finding alternative research topics and supervisors. When I mentioned the Edmonton Formation rumor to Dr. Stelck, he said calmly that I should not worry as I would be using a different sample processing technique. Nevertheless, I was so nervous that I saved enough money for the air-fare so I could return to India if necessary. Dr. Stelck continued to encourage me that I could complete the postgraduate program. The samples turned out to be very rich in spores and pollen and I completed the course work and MSc thesis in two semesters. I received my MSc degree in 1965 and was admitted to the PhD program.

In 1966, I read a paper on the palynology of the mammal-beds at the Canadian Botanical Society meeting in Vancouver. Before the session, I met Jack Campbell who told me that he was attending the session to see what I had recovered from the Edmonton Formation. Afterwards, he told me that he had found all those pollen but did not know what to call them. The postscript to this saga is that the Edmonton Formation turned out to be palynologically super-rich and has attracted worldwide attention.

As soon as I graduated, I received a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of British Columbia and a job offer for a palynology position at the Geological Survey of New Zealand. My prospects in India were dim. During my time studying in Canada, ONGC had promoted a junior person with a BSc and wanted to interview me for similar position. Nevertheless, I traveled to India in June 1968, but ONGC refused to give me a position that would take into account my PhD in geology and thesis in palynology. It was ludicrous to return to a job I could have had with a BSc so I resigned from ONGC at the end of August 1968. In lieu of the three year contract to serve ONGC, I paid 3,000 Indian Rupees (about Can$300) from the Rs12,000 that ONGC owed as my provident fund. I accepted the Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Botany, University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

During my post-doctoral fellowship in Vancouver, I applied to several institutions, universities and the oil industry but did not get a job. Some advertised positions fitted my qualifications and experience like gloves but those positions went to others whose qualifications differed from those advertised. By then I had about 40 publications so the oil industry considered me a research person and unsuitable for industry. The typical reply to my applications was that I was well qualified but . . . My tenure for the Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship was about to end in June 1970. I had reconciled myself to returning to India and registering in the Indian pool of scientists.

Meanwhile, Lucy M. Cranwell had given me a Neocomian sample from Chile for processing and examining. She arranged a visiting scholar status for me during February-March, 1970 at the Geochronology Laboratory of the University of Arizona, Tucson, courtesy of Terah Smiley, Director of the laboratory, so we could work on the assemblage. Towards the end of my work in Tucson, I received a telephone call from Ken Piel asking if I would give a presentation on my PhD thesis at Union Oil Company in Brea, California. Harry Leffingwell was working on the Maastrichtian Lance Formation of Wyoming [published by him in 1971 GSA Special Paper 127] and wished to see Maastrichtian Edmonton Formation pollen assemblages from Alberta. I had planned to return to Vancouver via Los Angeles so I adjusted my plan easily. The transparency slides that I had taken to show Lucy in Tucson became useful for the presentation at Union Oil. Ken and Harry hosted me lavishly with a dinner in Newport Beach and to my surprise presented me a check for $150.00 as an honorarium for the presentation. This was the first time that I had been paid for a 45 minute presentation which set in me greed to make some more money by giving a presentation to some other oil company also while I was in that area.

I had Warren Drugg's telephone number at Chevron Oil Field Research Company (COFRC) in La Habra which was very near Union Oil. I called Warren to say I was visiting Union Oil in Brea and wished to visit COFRC. Warren agreed to the visit and came to the hotel to pick me up. On the way we talked about Loeblich. I did not realize that A. (Al) R. Loeblich, Jr., worked at COFRC as I confused him with his son A. R. (Richard) Loeblich, III, who was working in Scripps Institute at that time. On reaching COFRC, I was introduced to a smiling Al swirling a beaker of palynology sample near the fume-hood. Al put the sample in the fume-hood, shook my hand, sat down on a high laboratory-stool, and immediately wanted to see my transparencies on a hand-held viewer which indicated to me Al's impatience to get to know paleontological information. Al knew all my publications and was curious about my current work. I was disappointed that no one asked me to give a presentation with the hope that I may be remunerated again. At the end of the day, Al asked me about my program for the next day. Without having any idea of the size of Disneyland, I told that I was planning to visit Disneyland in the morning and then catch my plane to Vancouver. Al smiled and said to forget about Disneyland and visit COFRC. He asked Tom Edison, a COFRC technical assistant, to pick me up in the morning.

As soon as I arrived the next day, I was summoned to Al's office. Al asked me if I would like to work for COFRC. On my affirming, Al gave me an application form and asked me to send it to him from Vancouver after I thought it over. Tom Edison drove me to the helipad in Anaheim from where I flew to Los Angeles airport for Vancouver. I applied for the position but immigration problems set in. The second year of my Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship was to end in June 1970 along with my Canadian visa and I needed at least six months to receive a green card for the United States. Chevron gave an excellent recommendation to the Labor, Immigration and Naturalization Department for the visa emphasizing that Chevron was one of the major suppliers of gas to Vietnam battle-fields and my expertise would be needed to explore oil-fields in SE Asia [I was expected to work on Indonesian samples]. Glen E. Rouse recommended an extension of my tenure for at least three months so that I could tie up the loose ends of my post-doctoral research project. The Canadian immigration officer extended my visa with great disgust, mumbling that Canada should not be the stepping stone to a U.S. visa. Not knowing whether I would get the tenure extension, I wrote Al about my impending financial crisis. Al sent me a project on contract from COFRC for that period.

Rosalind and I had been dating for five years. Our dilemma was whether getting married in Canada would jeopardize my getting a visa for the United States. I had read stories about spouses waiting years for a visa or having to apply from their country of origin. So Rosalind went to the U.S. Consulate and was told very kindly that if we got married in Canada a visa number would be given to both of us. During this time, Rosalind was teaching in Horsefly, a remote area of British Columbia about 540 miles north of Vancouver. Thus, at the close of the school year, we got married on 14th July, 1970, with Rolf Mathewes as my best man. Pier Binda wrote to us about the beginning of the French Revolution on July 14, 1789. Indeed it was a day of revolution in our lives, since it was an inter-racial, inter-continental, and inter-religious marriage. I wrote to Al Loeblich that now I got married and we will get a visa so all my problems were solved. Al showed my letter to Warren and chuckled about how little I knew about marriage! I joined COFRC on 29th September, 1970.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, my colleagues and I worked on several Tertiary wells drilled in Assam (eastern India) and western India by ONGC. Eocene and Miocene sediments were very rich in polycolpate [having four to nine colpi] pollen grains. Pollen classification was a free-for-all in those days, particularly in an operating oil company environment. We compared some of these pollen with "Nothofagus" pollen even to the level of fusca type. This assumption got further support by Potonié's 1960 publication of Nothofagidites from the Eocene Kalewa coals of Burma [Senckenbergiana Lathaea, 41: 451-480] which was similar to the Indian polycolpate grains. In 1961, Khan Sein's report on the occurrence of Nothofagus pollen in the London Clay [Nature, vol. 190] supported their occurrence in the Northern Hemisphere.

In 1962, A. K. Ghosh attended the First Palynological Conference in Tucson. He presented a paper on polycolpate pollen grains in the Tertiary of India [co-authors S. K. Srivastava and J. Sen, published 1963 (1964)] and proposed their affinity with Nothofagus. Lucy Cranwell challenged Ghosh on the identification of the pollen as Nothofagus. [Later I guessed in talking to Lucy that she did not relish Ghosh's arguments supporting Indian polycolpate pollen grains being fossil Nothofagus pollen]. Lucy had already given a couple of papers on extant and fossil Nothofagus in the Symposium "Pacific Basin Biogeography" of the Tenth Pacific Science Congress held at the University of Hawaii in 1961. She believed that Nothofagus never occurred in the Northern Hemisphere and thus all references to Nothofagus occurring in the Northern Hemisphere were incorrect. She could not refute the identity of the London Clay Nothofagus reported by Khan Sein (1961) and considered that it may have been contamination from some New Zealand or similar sample brought by some palynologist to that laboratory.

G. S. Puri published a paper in 1963 reporting Nothofagus pollen in Cretaceous and Paleocene sediments of Nigeria. Our polycolpate paper was in press at the time so Ghosh added a postscript to the galley-proofs that the wide distribution of Nothofagus in Africa, India and Far East during Senonian and Paleocene indicated similar environmental conditions at those times in now widely-separated lands. On receiving our paper, Lucy was very upset with this unreasonable assertion and took up discussions with me about the correct identification of those so-called fossil "Nothofagus" pollen from Northern Hemisphere. I agreed with Lucy about their wrong identifications but then the problem was to figure out their correct identifications. We toyed with the idea of an affinity with Pedaliaceae or Euphorbiaceae pollen until van Hoeken-Klinkenberg proposed the genus Ctenolophonidites for these pollen in 1966 [Leidse Geologische Mededelingen, vol. 38, p. 37-48] and Salard-Cheboldaeff paper in 1979 [Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, vol. 28, p. 365-388] popularized it.

Controversies and challenges sometimes bear unimagined results. I became curious why Nothofagus could not enter Africa as, after all, it entered South America. It turned out that the African plate had separated from the austral province in the Senonian which did not let Nothofagus enter Africa [Srivastava, S. K. 1994, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, vol. 82, p. 197-224]. Upon noticing that Ctenolophon has a disjunct modern distribution restricted to areas of west Africa and Malaysia, I became curious to know the reason for its separate occurrence in modern distribution separated by East Africa and the Indian Ocean. This led me to trace the fossil history of Ctenolophonidites and the mechanism of Ctenolophon's migration from West Africa through the Indian plate in the Senonian and arrival in Malaysia in the Eocene-Oligocene [Srivastava, S. K., 1987-88, Journal of Palynology, vol. 23-24, p.239-253]. Thus, Lucy's belief about Nothofagus prevailed and she was very pleased with these two publications.

In 1962 while still in India, I submitted Jurassic microflora from Rajasthan, India to Micropaleontology for publication. I sent the manuscript by sea mail and so expected it to take quite a while to reach New York. I didn't hear anything from the editor's office and presumed the manuscript had been lost in transit. After joining the University of Alberta in September 1964, I reminded the editor of Micropaleontology about my pending manuscript and, to my surprise, received a polite letter of apology that the manuscript had been lost in a heap of papers and now would be sent to a reviewer. Soon I received the manuscript with an anonymous reviewer's comments and suggestions -- 19 pages, hand-written, objective, helpful, and polite. Along with my responses, I thanked the anonymous reviewer for improving the manuscript which was eventually published [Micropaleontology, 12(1): 87-103, 1966]. I promised to myself to emulate that anonymous reviewer if I ever had to serve as a reviewer for others' manuscripts. After joining Chevron in 1970, I told Al Loeblich this story and showed him the reviewer's comments. Al was sure the anonymous reviewer was his friend Dr. Brooks F. Ellis, Micropaleontology's editor at that time. Never again did I receive such encouraging comments from any reviewer.

The following were my nine fellow palynology students who took degrees at the University of Alberta:

Gerhard Bihl - MSc under Charles R. Stelck; PhD from University of British Columbia. Gerhard then became a monk. He had heard that Professor Al Traverse was a monk for some time and still remained a palynologist, so why he cannot follow a similar career path.

Pier Binda - PhD on the micropaleontology, including palynology, of the Whitemud and Blackmud Formations, Alberta. His thesis supervision was shared by Professor Jack F. Lerbekmo and Charles R. Stelck. Pier worked for a copper exploration firm in Zambia, taught geology in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and then became professor of geology at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina. He retired a couple of years ago.

Byong Il Chi - MSc under Charles R. Stelck; PhD under Len Hills, University of Calgary. He worked for an oil company in Calgary after finishing his PhD.

Rex Harland - PhD on the Bearpaw (Campanian) Formation of Alberta under Charles R. Stelck. He received DSc from the University of Sheffield on his Quaternary dinocyst work. Rex retired from the Institute of Geological Sciences, England, and now has his consulting firm 'DinoData Services' in Nottingham, England, and a faculty position at the University of Sheffield.

Len Hills - PhD under Charles R. Stelck in 1966. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Calgary, Alberta.

Chaitanya Singh - PhD in 1963 on Albian sediments of Alberta under Charles R. Stelck. He worked in the Research Council of Alberta and published three monographic bulletins and several other papers. Most of his work covered Albian-Cenomanian strata of Alberta. He is retired and lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

Bob Snead - PhD on the Paleocene of Alberta under Charles R. Stelck. He went into consulting on the geology of petroleum exploration in Texas.

Bindra Thusu - MSc on the Cenomanian sediments of Alberta under Charles R. Stelck; PhD on acritarchs from Leeds University, England. He first worked for IKU, Norway, and then for Gulf Oil Company, Libya. Presently Bindra is stationed in London.

Anan Yorke - PhD on Devonian acritarchs from Ghana under Charles R. Stelck. When I last heard, Anan was a regional director in the Geological Survey of Ghana at Saltpond, Ghana.

During my Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia, I had two fellow palynology students:

Rolf W. Mathewes - PhD in Quaternary palynology under Glen E. Rouse. He was best man at our wedding in 1970. Rolf is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.

Ken Piel - PhD in Miocene palynology under Glen E. Rouse. Ken was a palynologist in Unocal for several years and now lives in Massachusetts.

This is a difficult question to answer as my palynological career is a composite of various research activities and positions. I recognize the following three major influences during my research career.

1. In 1954, I joined Forest Research Institute (FRI), Dehradun, India, in the cytology section of the Botany Branch. In 1955, I was assigned to assist Dr. G. S. Puri in the Silviculture Branch in his book on the forest ecology of India. As I mentioned earlier, Puri had two PhDs. One was on the Karewa (Pleistocene interglacial lake deposits) leaf flora of Kashmir under Professor Birbal Sahni, Lucknow University. The other, from England, was on forest ecology. Puri was known as a paper publishing machine and a prolific correspondent with scientists worldwide. He founded the International Society of Tropical Ecology. Assisting Puri in completing the book "Forest Ecology of India" trained me how to consult literature, write technical papers, and refer to literature. This assignment also provided me an opportunity to go through a vast amount of literature on botany, ecology, paleobotany, pedology, and geology. The two volume book, Indian Forest Ecology by G. S. Puri, was published in 1960 (Oxford Book & Stationery Co., New Delhi and Calcutta). I had been keen to be able to write from a young age and working with Puri fueled this enthusiasm. I published my first professional paper just after joining ONGC in 1957.

As soon as I reported to Puri, he asked me if I knew shorthand. I didn't so had to learn to write his dictation swiftly and legibly! While compiling data and references for Puri's book, I had a painful learning experience. My job included getting hundreds of bound journals, periodicals, and books from FRI's extensive and comprehensive library. Puri would flag articles and scribble notes for me to make an abstract of an article or copy a table, etc. There were no photocopy machines in those days, so everything had to be written by hand or drafted and then sent for typing. The typed material was checked, filed in appropriate chapter-files, and the books returned to the library. In the pre-computer era, the Ibid. abbreviation for ibidem "in the same place" was used in reference lists and text instead of repeating the previous author's or journal's name. Not knowing the meaning, I kept on writing 'Ibid.' in the references of the notes I had taken. Eventually Puri caught the mistake. He was tall in personality and short in temper and so I was expecting the worst. I guess Puri realized that my labor to find the original authors and references would be enough punishment. He did not say much except to tell me harshly about Ibid's meaning and usage. I am sure Puri relished the suffering I had in correcting hundreds of files. I have never forgotten that word although I never had to use it in my publications.

2. I went to Canada in 1964 for MSc and PhD studies under Professor Charles R. Stelck at the University of Alberta. Stelck had a PhD from Stanford University in micropaleontology and was primarily a stratigraphic geologist and paleontologist but supervised several paleopalynology students. Publications in which I used palynological data in the construction of Cretaceous phytogeographical maps are influenced by Stelck's geology teachings. I am immensely impressed with Stelck as a teacher, supervisor, and loving human being.

One incident will indicate Stelck's liberal attitude. Considering the Kneehills Tuff (a bentonitic tuff layer traceable in a large area) as marine, Stelck suggested palynological research for my MSc thesis on the upper member (now Scollard Formation) of the Edmonton Formation (now Group) which extended from the Black Shale containing the Kneehills Tuff to the Nevis coal seam. Several siliceous "Globigerinid" microfossils that Stelck had separated from the Black Shale formed the basis for the Kneehills as a marine datum line. In 1965, Binda asked me to look at some "Globigerinid" microfossils that he had picked from a Kneehills Tuff sample as he was not convinced that they were foraminifers. I looked at them under the field microscope and recognized that they were siliceous trilete megaspores of Isoetes ferns. Instead of being upset, Stelck was pleased that the depositional nature of the Kneehills was solved and his "Globigerinid" microfossils were identified. Binda and I co-authored a paper (Stelck never attached his name as a co-author to his students' publications) on siliceous trilete megaspores published in Micropaleontology [1968, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 105-113]. Since then the Kneehills Tuff has been treated as a nonmarine deposit.

Incidentally, the nonmarine nature of the Kneehills Tuff opened up my PhD project. Previously the Kneehills, being considered as a marine deposit, was accepted as a datum base for the Lancian mammal-beds in North America. The original plan was to collect samples from Lancian mammal-beds deposited on the edges of the Cretaceous inland-sea in North America, correlate them by pollen assemblages, and interpret their paleoecology. When the Kneehills turned out to be a non-marine deposit, my PhD project was extended to the next marine beds of the Campanian Bearpaw Formation of Alberta.

3. During 1964-1968, I took micropaleontology courses and came across several Loeblich and Tappan references, particularly the treatise volume on 'Thecamoebians' and Foraminiferida. I met Loeblich in 1969 at Chevron Oil Field Research Company, La Habra, California. I was impressed that Loeblich knew all my publications even though spore-pollen study was not his research area. He had already published papers on dinocysts and acritarchs. He talked about my theses and about several palynologists and, as mentioned previously, offered me a position at COFRC which I joined in 1970. At a paleobotanical meeting in Edmonton in 1971, Aureal Cross asked me where I was working. On hearing COFRC with Al Loeblich as my boss, he commented that it was difficult to get along with Al. During dinner at the AASP Ensenada meeting in 1998, I reminded Aureal about his remark whereupon he countered that Al never suffered fools gladly and "you worked hard".

I remained influenced by Loeblich's publications, palynological nomenclatural guidance, his humanity, and his life-long friendship. In the late eighties, Al started having symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. In the last week of August 1994, Rosalind and I went to see him. Helen Tappan had prepared lunch and we all ate together. After lunch, Al sat in his easy-chair and we tried to make some talk with him. It appeared that he was listening but could not speak. At the time of leaving, Rosalind and I shook his hand. Al held our hands and kept them held on his heart and seemed to want to say something. With teary eyes, we left him watching us leave. Al died on September 9, 1994. Reed Wicander and I co-edited a Festschrift volume of the Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology in 1997 for Loeblich and Tappan.

I attended my first palynological meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1968 (AASP meeting). At that time, I was a Killam Postdoctoral fellow with Professor Glen E. Rouse in the Botany Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

In 1963, I presented a paper on Jurassic flora from Rajasthan, India at the 15th Annual Meeting of the Palaeobotanical Society of India held at the Birbal Sahni Institute for Palaeobotany, Lucknow, India. I did not have transparencies for projection so had arranged plates on a board on one side and a large map of India to show localities on the other side. I sketched the correlation of two wells on the blackboard. The room was full to capacity and a few people were lurking in the doorways. Most of the attendees were either past or present paleobotanists from Sahni Institute. Thus I was an outsider and non-PhD presenting a paper. As soon as I finished my presentation, almost everyone jumped to tear me apart by asking questions -- at least that is how it felt. Most of the questions were not relevant to the paper but to expose my knowledge. The session chair, Professor T. S. Mahabale of Poona (now Pune) University, soon realized that the questions were just to harass me. He stood up, hugged me, and congratulated me on the presentation, particularly for being the only person using the blackboard.

In 1957-58, I was assigned to study well samples of the middle-upper Miocene Siwalik Formation from Jwalamukhi, Punjab, India, and write palynology reports. The Siwalik system consists of the low outermost hills along the entire length of the Himalayas. It was formed by the deposition of the erosional detritus of the emerging Himalayas during the Neogene. Mountain-building activity folded and faulted the strata. The Siwaliks are very rich in vertebrate, wood and leaf fossils, including about thirty species of elephant or elephant-like animals that had lived in the jungles and got entombed in the sediments. ONGC field parties found huge fossilized tusks. The Siwaliks are coarsely-bedded sandstones, clays and conglomerates of 15,000-17,000 ft thickness. I examined hundreds of wells and surface samples from the Siwaliks but they only yielded bisaccate pollen, probably mostly Pinaceae. Bisaccate pollen seldom fall in an ideal position for identification. I tried to take help from ONGC statistician Dr. Bhatnagar. He was a perfect gentleman and ever ready to help me, but wanted thousands of pollen measured in the same view to get valid statistical results so the project went nowhere.

As paleopalynology was a new subject for me, I started experimenting with extant Pinus roxburghii pollen. I wanted to see how a corroded bisaccate pollen looks under the microscope so I put pollen in various concentrations of nitric acid and dated the vials for subsequent examination at various intervals. I also wanted to find the percentage of pollen grains falling in various views in a slide with the expectation that it may help my Siwalik wells study. I examined pollen in nitric acid for a couple of years but abandoned the project when I saw no change in the exine. Finding the percentage pollen in various views on a slide was an impossible task as almost every specimen was in a different aspect. However, during the examination of extant pollen slides, I noticed several abnormal pollen grains having up to four sacs. This resulted in the following two papers:

"Srivastava, S. K. 1961. Morphology of normal and some abnormal pollen grains of Pinus roxburghii Sarg. Grana Palynologica, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 130-132.

"Srivastava, S. K. 1960. On the abnormality in some pollen grains of Pinus roxburghii Sarg. and its significance in the evolution of the saccate pollen grains. Bulletin of the Botanical Society of Bengal, vol. 14, nos. 1-2, p. 5-9.

1. I consider that my palynological investigation on the Maastrichtian Edmonton Formation (now Group) of Alberta, Canada, is one of the significant contributions. My MSc (1965) and PhD (1968) theses are based on that investigation. The study was based on 186 outcrop samples collected from nine measured sections spread in a north-south direction in the Red Deer Valley of Alberta. Nine angiosperm pollen zones were recognized in cumulative 840 ft section with a correlative potential of a subzone to a 250 mile distance. Most of the zones and their regional correlative potential are still valid after about 35 years. These pollen-zones were referred to several times during the pre-conference field-trip of the International Geological Congress at Montreal in 1972. The following paper was published based on this research.

Srivastava, S. K. 1970. Pollen biostratigraphy and paleoecology of the Edmonton Formation (Maestrichtian), Alberta, Canada. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), vol. 7, pp. 221 276, pls. 1 4, text figs. 1 14.

Srivastava, S. K. 1984. Barremian dinoflagellate cysts from southern France. Cahiers de Micropaléontologie, (Paris, France), Vol. 2 1984, pp. 1 90, pls. 1 39, text figs. 1 11.

Srivastava, S. K. !987. Jurassic spore-pollen assemblages from Normandy (France) and Germany. Geobios (France), No. 20, Fasc. 1, pp. 5 79, pls. 1 17, text figs. 1 3.

Srivastava, S. K. 1992. Dinocyst biostratigraphy of Cenomanian-Coniacian formations of the western Gulf Coastal Plain, southern United States. The Palaeobotanist (Lucknow, India), Vol. 39, No. 2(1990), p. 155-235, 38 pls., 6 text figures.

Srivastava, S. K. 1995. Dinocyst biostratigraphy of Santonian-Maastrichtian formations of the western Gulf Coastal Plain, southern United States. The Palaeobotanist (Lucknow, India), Vol. 42, No. 3, p. 249-362, 51 pls., 6 text-figures (1993).

Srivastava, S. K. 1994. Palynology of the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in the Scollard Formation of Alberta, Canada, and global KTB events. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, vol. 83, p. 137-158, 4 pls., 6 text-figures.

Srivastava, S. K. 1994. Evolution of Cretaceous phytogeoprovinces, continents and climates. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, vol. 82, p. 197-224, pls. 1-6, 7 text-figures.

Several nomenclatural systems have been proposed since van der Hammen's classical nomenclatural system in 1954. Van der Hammen's nomenclature is binomial but its classification is artificial based on spore-pollen morphology. I think that binomial nomenclature based on the type material and the rule of priority according to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature is the most important development. The nomenclature enabled refinements in palynomorph taxonomy, biostratigraphy, and palynomorph evolution. The binomial name became a concrete communication method in palynology.

I had the opportunity of meeting three of the four pioneers of palynology -- Erdtman, Faegri and Potonié, but not van Campo. In my estimation, Gunnar Erdtman is the most influential palynologist. His study of pollen grain morphology set the standard for providing data to establish morphological relationships with fossil pollen and spores and a way to distinguish palynomorph species. The amount of work he produced is phenomenal and very useful -- his reprints in my collection are dog-eared!

In 1957, I played guide when Erdtman and his wife, Gunni, visited Dehradun and Mussoorie, including the ONGC Palynology Laboratory. Erdtman accepted to publish one of my early papers on abnormal pollen grains of Pinus roxburghii Sarg. [Grana Palynologica, 1963, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 130-132]. I exchanged publications with Erdtman from 1957 until his death in 1973. Although I tried to follow the morphological terms coined by Erdtman, it was a little difficult to remain current as he changed his terminology in almost every new publication. In 1969, I received a fat packet in the mail from Erdtman. With great eagerness, I opened the packet but was horrified to find all my reprints sent to Erdtman since 1966, some cut with a procrustean method to fit the envelope. Several thoughts raced through my mind until I located Erdtman's hand-written letter. He wrote that I shouldn't be offended that he had commented in the margin about some of the species descriptions. He had returned the reprints with the hope that I would note his comments and then return all the reprints to him. He was intolerant of wrong nomenclatural endings, and marginal notes of "Terrible!" indicated those he deemed incorrect. I had oriented a tricolpate pollen against his specified model and he sketched a stick-figure of a man standing on his head and commented "Terrible!". Another comment was that a pollen description can be considered good only after it has stood at least five years. He thought that my descriptions would stand longer. I copied all his corrections onto my respective reprints and returned the packet with thanks for his concern.

Erdtman kept full administrative control of his laboratory. In 1968, I visited his laboratory unannounced while visiting Stockholm, but found that Erdtman was vacationing on an island offshore Sweden. Praglowski, who was officiating for him, welcomed me and took me to Erdtman's office which was Praglowski's temporary office until Erdtman's return. Praglowski telephoned Erdtman to inform him about my arrival and ask permission to give me a laboratory tour. Erdtman's control of the laboratory was such that Praglowski stood up to talk to him during the phone call. Erdtman told Praglowski to extend all hospitality in showing me the laboratory and expressed his regret that he was not there to welcome me. I enjoyed visiting the laboratory. Upon my departure, Praglowski offered to drive me to my next visiting point. On learning that I intended to visit Hans Tralau at the Museum of Stockholm University, Praglowski said he would drive me up to the door of that museum but would not go in. I understood the rift between the two laboratories and accepted Praglowski's offer.

In my oil company employment, I had no such opportunity. I had some discussions on palynology with Ms. Sharma L. Gaponoff when she joined COFRC in La Habra, California. She was a quick learner and soon she was on her own. Sharma is still with Chevron (now Chevron-Texaco).

I trained Raphaël Konan Yao of the palynology laboratory of Petroleum Oil corporation of Côte d'Ivoire (PETROCI), West Africa. Raphaël is presently with PETROCI.

I would advise young scientists to take palynology as a secondary field in academia as done originally. Palynology as a career has little scope in the oil industry now. The industry may use palynology, but on a consultant basis or via grants to students or faculty in botany or geology departments. Palynology has become an application science but cannot survive as an independent subject. Even Erdtman's palynology laboratory in Stockholm, which did extensive fundamental research in modern pollen morphology, is now closed.

I'm afraid they are not very colorful, and if you can think of more interesting ones, please send them to me. You will be doing me a favor. Thanks very much for agreeing to work on this project. Owen.