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James H. Stitt: A Dedicated Professor and Exemplary Biostratigrapher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2016

John F. Taylor
John F. Taylor*
Affiliation:
Geoscience Department, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705
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On Friday September 17 Jim Stitt died quietly in his sleep, ending a long and characteristically tenacious battle with cancer. His passing leaves a void of great magnitude in the geological sciences and in the lives of the many people whom he influenced as family, friends, or colleagues. I was Jim's first Ph.D. student at the University of Missouri, where he spent the past 31 years as a pillar of the geology program, serving at various times as Chair and Graduate Student Advisor. Jim is well known and respected for an impressive body of meticulously crafted taxonomic and biostratigraphic studies on trilobites and brachiopods. His three monographs on faunas in the Arbuckle and Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma (Stitt, 1971a, 1977, 1983) established that area as a standard for correlation of Upper Cambrian and Lower Ordovician strata in North America. This “Oklahoma trilogy” is a treasure trove of taxonomic and biostratigraphic data that has been drawn upon heavily in numerous subsequent biostratigraphic and paleobiologic studies. It provides a biozonation of unparalleled precision for carbonate platform facies of that interval, ironically assembled in an area where rocks of that age yield their fossils only reluctantly. Jim took great pride in extracting useful information from difficult rocks. He passed that laudable attitude on to his academic offspring, along with the sense of satisfaction he derived from seeing his data put to good use in solving geologic or paleobiologic problems, in his own work and in that of others. At the same time, he was always complimentary and supportive of more theoretical or abstract research, an attitude sadly lacking in some practitioners with a bent toward applied paleontology.

Type
Memorial
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 74 , Issue 2 , March 2000 , pp. 367 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 2000

References

Brezinski, D. K., and Stitt, J. H. 1982. Ditomopyge scitula (Meek and Worthen) from the Lower Pennsylvanian of central Missouri and central Texas: Journal of Paleontology, 56:1242–1250.Google Scholar
Hart, W. D., Stitt, J. H., Hohensee, S. R. and Ethington, R. L. 1987. Geological implications of Late Cambrian trilobites from the Collier Shale, Jessieville area, Arkansas: Geology, 15:447–450.Google Scholar
Hohensee, S. R. and Stitt, J. H. 1989. Redeposited Elvinia Zone (Upper Cambrian) trilobites from the Collier Shale, Ouachita Mountains, west-central Arkansas. Journal of Paleontology, 63:857–879.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, J. F., and Stitt, J. H. 1997. Stratigraphic position and significance of Jujuyaspis and lapetognathus in the Wilberns Formation, Texas, p. 105–108. In Cooper, J. D., Droser, M. L., and Finney, S. C. (eds.), Ordovician Odyssey: Short papers for the Seventh International Symposium on the Ordovician System, Pacific Section, Society for Sedimentary Geology.Google Scholar
Perfetta, P. J., Shelton, K. L., and Stitt, J. H. 1999. Carbon isotope evidence for deep water invasion at the Marjumiid-Pterocephaliid Biomere boundary, Black Hills, USA: common origin for biotic crises on Late Cambrian shelves. Geology, 27:403–406.2.3.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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