Ronald Martin

Ron Martin is Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Delaware.  He grew up in southwestern Ohio, where world famous assemblages of Late Ordovician fossils drew his attention to paleontology.  He received a B.S. degree in Geology and Paleontology from Bowling Green State University (Ohio), M.S. in Geology from the University of Florida, and Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of California at Berkeley.  He worked as an operations micropaleontologist and biostratigrapher for Unocal in Houston (Texas) from 1981-1985 before coming to the University of Delaware.  He teaches (or has taught) introductory courses in Physical geology and Earth history (upon which Earth’s Evolving Systems is based), Paleontology, Paleoecology, Sedimentology and Stratigraphy, and Advanced (Sequence) Stratigraphy), among others and he has been nominated several times for the university-wide Best Teacher Award.  His research interests include the taphonomy (preservation) and biostratigraphy of microfossil assemblages and, most recently, the role of phytoplankton evolution in the diversification of the marine biosphere.  He is the author or co-author of over 60 papers; in addition to Earth’s Evolving Systems, he has also authored One Long Experiment: Scale and Process in Earth History (Columbia University Press) and Taphonomy: A Process Approach (Cambridge University Press), and edited Environmental Micropaleontology: The Application of Microfossils to Environmental Geology (Kluwer/Plenum Press).  He received the Best Paper Award in 1996 from the journalPalaios for “Secular Increase in Nutrient Levels Through the Phanerozoic: Implications for Productivity, Biomass, and Diversity of the Marine Biosphere”; his work was also featured as the cover article in the June (2013) issue of Scientific American: “Tiny Engines of Evolution”, which was translated into French, German, Spanish, and Japanese sister publications.   He is past president of the North American Micropaleontology Section of the Society of Sedimentary Geology, former Editor of the Journal of Foraminiferal Research and Associate Editor of Palaios; and was Visiting Professor at the Université de Lille (France) in 2014.

Research Interests

1) Taphonomy: The formation and preservation of fossil and subfossil (especially microfossil) assemblages in different sedimentary environments (carbonate and terrigenous) over different scales of time ranging from modern to hundreds of millions of years or more, and the temporal resolution they provide in assessing past environmental change.

2) Environmental Micropaleontology and Geoarchaeology: The use of different microfossil taxa to determine natural and anthropogenic impacts on estuaries and tidal rivers such as sea-level rise, deforestation, and pollution.  Recent work has occurred in the Christina tidal river basin and the Black Sea.

3) Subsurface Stratigraphy and Water Resources of Delaware:  Dr. Peter McLaughlin of the Delaware Geological Survey and I supervise students who are studying the occurrence of formations in the subsurface of Delaware that serve as important aquifers and aquicludes.  We are using foraminiferal assemblages and strontium isotope stratigraphy to better delineate the occurrence of these units and different facies (environments).  The occurrence of these units is related to paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic change of Earth's environments.

4) Marine Biodiversity through geologic time in relation to the evolution of major biogeochemical cycles of phosphorus and micronutrients: Together with the phytoplankton specialist Dr. Antonietta Quigg (Texas A&M University, Galveston) and Dr. Warren Allmon (Director, Paleontological Research Institution and Professor at Cornell University), we have hypothesized that the evolution of marine biodiversity over geologic scales of time is related in part to the evolution of phytoplankton stoichiometry.  Based on studies of trophic cascades in lakes, we suggest that increasing nutrient content of phytoplankton has made it “easier” for animals higher in food pyramids to obtain these nutrients by not having to first expend their own energy to first respire the carbon in food, thereby leaving more energy available for reproduction, increasing population size, and metabolism and to greater rates of micro- and macroevolution.   

Publications

Allmon, W. D. and martin, R. E. 2014. Seafood through time revisited: the Phanerozoic increase in marine trophic resouirces and its macroevolutionary consequences.  Paleobiology 40:256-287. doi:10.1066/13065