Every picture tells a story. This one is a snapshot I took of Dan Livingstone’s African palaeolimnology group in June1984, when I spent a few months at Duke University, North Carolina, at Dan’s invitation. I had started work on the pollen analysis of a Holocene core from Cameroon that I’d collected in 1981 and Dan was keen to help me as far as possible. He was making plans for his lake coring projects a few years later in Cameroon (Barombi Mbo).
I was already corresponding about pollen identification with Bisi at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria so it was a wonderful surprise to find she was visiting Duke at the same time. She was later Professor of Environmental Archaeology and Palynology at Ibadan. Alice and Susan were working with Pat Palmer on the African SEM grass cuticle atlases. Pat retired in 2000 after several years as Professor of Biology and Research Associate at Duke University and Luisburg College, North Carolina. Wendy was office admin (and my general ‘minder’). David and Lida have since worked on many East African palaeoecological studies including Madagascar. Until recently, David was Director of Conservation at the National Tropical Botanic Garden in Hawaii. David and Lida now live in Hawaii and both work primarily in cave conservation. George was looking at lake water chemistry and published the first detailed story about the Cameroon gas disaster at Lake Nyos that killed almost 2000 people and many livestock on August 21st 1986. He surveyed the lake waters before and after the gas (CO2) event. The exact cause of the gas release is unknown but may have resulted from a landslide. George is now Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan.
My short time at Duke was undoubtedly an important step in getting me on the road to gainful employment in palynology, which has continued ever since. I remember Dan as a most kind and gentle man, even a bit shy perhaps. His enthusiasm for all the ongoing studies was immense and he made time equally for all his students and co-workers, including ‘newbies’ like me. We corresponded by letter for several years afterwards, including several written ‘from the field’ when Dan was in Cameroon. Dan sadly died in 2016 but will be fondly remembered by all those he knew and worked with.
Ecology of the past 