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Palaeontologist who pioneered analysis of trace fossils.
Adolf Seilacher used the simplest of methods - careful observation - to transform our understanding of ancient organisms. His interpretations of the enigmatic Ediacara fossils, which date from about 578 million years ago, before the appearance of the major animal phyla during the Cambrian explosion, explained forms found among the earliest large organisms.
Seilacher also showed how trace fossils - those that record biological activity such as the burrowing of marine animals - reveal behavioural traits. He analysed the influences that shape invertebrate morphology and showed how exceptionally preserved fossil assemblages (for which he used the term Lagerstätten) are the result of conditions such as low oxygen, rapid burial and the effect of microbial films that seal the sediment surface.
In a career that straddled the Atlantic, Seilacher influenced palaeontology as much with his personality as with his publications. With a commanding yet engaging presence, he had a way of asking questions that caught speakers offguard - an occurrence referred to as being 'Dolfed'.
Seilacher, who died on 26 April aged 89, was born in 1925 near Stuttgart in Germany. He found his first fossil at the age of 14 and published his first paper, on fossil sharks from local rocks, at 18. He served in the German navy in the last years of the Second World War before entering the University of Tübingen in 1945.
There, palaeontologist...