From hystrichospheres to dinoflagellate cysts: Scandinavian contributions to Evitt’s pivotal recognition of fossil dinoflagellate cysts

Abstract

As one of the remaining living links with two early Scandinavian researchers, the author examines their contribution to Bill Evitt’s breakthrough that launched the development of fossil dinoflagellate cysts into palynology. Evitt, in the early 1960s, revealed that many fossil hystrichospheres were in fact dinoflagellate cysts. Trygve Braarud, a Norwegian phytoplankton biologist, and Gunnar Erdtman, a Swedish palynologist, collaborated in 1954 to identify the first examples of living hystrichospheres as dinoflagellate cysts. This and a related study by the Norwegian Erling Nordli provided important evidence for Evitt’s breakthrough in 1961, but the wider palynological literature does not yet reflect the full significance of the Scandinavian work. Copies of correspondence between Braarud and Erdtman reproduced here together with the author’s personal observations help to clarify the extent to which this earlier work influenced the breakthrough. The Scandinavians were not aware at the time of the wider significance of their work for palynology, realized only later through Evitt’s perception. Reexamining this Scandinavian connection now therefore in no way detracts from Evitt’s pivotal role in launching ‘dinos’ into palynology. This example from palynology shows details of how exciting breakthroughs in science often happen, as work in separate but related fields is coalesced into a larger, more significant concept.