IN MEMORIAM
Paul C. Lyons
1938-2023 |
Written by By Harvey E. Belkin, Reston, VA, with contributions from Alan Davis, Angeles Borrego, Peter Crosdale, and Paul Hackley
from
TSOP Newsletter 41 (3), September 2024
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Paul Lyons, courtesy of the Lyons family, undated.
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Paul Christopher Lyons died on September 24, 2023 at the age of 84. He was born in 1938 in Cambridge, Massachusetts to parents of Irish heritage. After graduating from Cambridge High and Latin School, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was stationed on the USS Bennington, an Essex-class aircraft carrier.
After military service, he enrolled in Boston University, where his mentor was Prof. C. Wroe Wolfe, who founded the Boston University Geology Department in 1943. At Boston University, Lyons received a A.B., A.M., and Ph.D. in 1969. His Ph.D. dissertation was the study of the bedrock geology of the Mansfield Quadrangle, southeastern Massachusetts.
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The Mansfield Quadrangle has very complex and varied geology ranging from Precambrian calc-alkaline mafic to felsic intrusives, Middle Paleozoic alkaline plutonic rocks, and Pennsylvanian sedimentary rocks. The Pennsylvanian rocks were the northwestern part of the Narragansett Basin and there were a number of small coal mines and occurrences around Mansfield.
After his Ph.D., Paul stayed at Boston University to teach and began publishing the results of his dissertation. He published on two themes, first the petrology and mineralogy of the igneous rocks, and second, on the details of the paleobotany and stratigraphy of the Pennsylvanian Narragansett and nearby Norfolk Basin rocks. One early publication, in particular, presaged his commitment to correct classification and naming. In a 1976 paper in Geology, he critiqued a proposed reclassification of granitic rocks by the IUGS. Although the main part of his dissertation concerned igneous petrology and mineralogy, during mapping he discovered a significant new locality of Pennsylvanian plant fossils and that became his lifelong interest.
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Paul Lyons, undated, courtesy of Lyons family.
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Lyons with Marlies Teichmüller, 1992 PSU Joint TSOP-ICCP meeting. Photos courtesy Alan Davis.
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In 1977, Paul joined the Branch of Coal Resources, U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia. There he conducted a very wide range of coal-related research on topics such as paleobotany, Appalachian Basin tonsteins, vitrinite chemistry, and with Carolyn L. Thompson (now Thompson-Rizer) and others he began his assault on the validity of sclerotinite, the favorite maceral for some coal petrographers.
Lyons joined ICCP and TSOP and was an active member in both organizations. In ICCP, he participated as a member of Commissions I, II, and III and made significant contributions to all as recognized by his status as an honorary member. For example, during the Porto 1998 Commission II meeting, a working group was created, Coal Bed Methane-CO2 Sequestration, based on a proposal by Lyons with the aim of identifying possible contributions of organic petrology to coalbed methane studies. And in Commission I, Paul pushed for the reassessment of the inertinite maceral, sclerotinite. He contributed two entries for the ICCP Handbook of Coal Petrology; they were for the inertinite macerals funginite and secretinite, which were accepted for inclusion in 1999. He played a major role in the recognition that the former maceral sclerotinite contained not just materials of fungal origin but also oxidized resinous material. In TSOP, Paul gave many oral presentations and wrote a column for the TSOP Newsletter reporting on the latest ICCP meeting and what was significant for the TSOP members.
Paul retired from the USGS in 1999 and moved up to southeastern Massachusetts, near his Ph.D. field area. He continued actively conducting research and publishing. In 2000, Paul authored a paper defining funginite and secretinite as two new macerals of the inertinite maceral group, as sclerotinite was abandoned as a maceral. Paul's last publication was in 2018 about the fossil flora and age of the Wamsutta red beds, Narragansett Basin, and its correlation with the Cumberland Group in the Maritime Provinces of Canada.
Paul is survived by his former wife, four daughters and one son, and many grandchildren.
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