Curious Mind: A Celebration of the Extraordinary Life and Ichnological Contributions of Adolf "Dolf" Seilacher (1925 2014)
Curiosity (from the Latin curiosus "careful, diligent, curious," akin to cura "care" is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and many animal species. The term can also be used to denote the behavior itself, being caused by the emotion of curiosity. As this emotion represents a thirst for knowledge, curiosity constitutes a major driving force behind scientific research and other disciplines of human study. Dolf Seilacher (Fig. 1A) personified this definition, and his extraordinary life stands a testament to all of us on how science should be undertaken. Although we are concentrating on Dolf's ichnological contributions, his research dealt with many other aspects of paleontology. Dolf's ichnological contributions included work in constructional morphodynamics, the study of exceptionally preserved fossil deposits (LagerstEURatten) and Ediacaran assemblages, where he is known for proposing the innovative hypothesis of the Vendobionta. In each of these fields, Dolf's creative work stimulated further research, which led to fundamental discoveries and imaginative interpretations. His research is really based on first principles and the power of observation. It is rare when a discipline can chart its inception to a single practitioner, but ichnology owes its modern foundation to Adolf "Dolf" Seilacher and a series of papers that he published from 1953 to 1964. In these papers, Dolf gave life to the field of ichnology until then, a somewhat anecdotal science that was considered by most paleontologists as a quaint field inhabited by the flotsam of paleontology. Dolf really showed us the beauty of the science and the significance of understanding animal sediment inter relationships. Building on the work of earlier geologists such as the German palaeontologist Rudolf Richter, founder of the Senckenberg Laboratory in Wilhelmshaven, and the Austrian paleontologist Othenio Abel, Dolf was able to put order into the fledging science. Since the inception of the Senckenberg Laboratory (Pemberton, 2003; Cad ee and Goldring, 2007) Germany had become the center of innovation in animal sediment relations, taphonomy, and Aktuo palEURaontologie (Actualistic Paleontology) One of us (SGP) first became aware of Dolf in 1971, while doing his BSc thesis at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, on the Ordovician Gull River Limestone. This unit contained trace fossils, and SGP started reading about them. He found Dolf's seminal papers, but they were written in German, and so it took him sometime to translate them all. The more SGP read, the more he was hooked, and he decided that ichnology was what he wanted to do. He first met Dolf at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, in 1976, where he was doing his PhD. Dolf had been invited to give a series of talks by McMaster paleontologist Gerd Westermann (a classmate of Dolf's at the University of TEUR ubingen) The talks were eagerly anticipated, but the senior author was mystified that Dolf did not even mention trace fossils; the talks centered on cephalopod suture strength. He soon learned that the hallmark of Dolf's science was to never expect the obvious!