Remembering Dr. Jordi M. de Gibert

From a young age, Jordi Maria was always fascinated by Natural Sciences, Geology and fossils being especially attractive for him. Together with his school friends, planning a fieldtrip to observe and recollect fossils was one of his hobbies. At that time, Jordi Maria was really interested in trilobites. In fact, he gathered an interesting collection of fossils of this group from the Catalonian Palaeozoic rocks.

Jordi Maria had no doubts about his future; he wanted to be a palaeontologist. To get it, he enrolled at the Faculty of Geology of the Universitat de Barcelona in the 1986/1987 academic year. Four years later, he got his degree in Geology (1990/1991). During these years, he first met Prof. Jordi Martinell and Dr Rosa Domènech (his ‘Paleontology’ and ‘Invertebrate Paleontology’ professors). Over time, both would become his friends and colleagues for over 20 years.

Continuing his formation as palaeontologist, Jordi Maria wanted to develop his Master thesis in the study of trilobites (those collected during his youth), so he proposed to Prof. J. Martinell to be his supervisor. However, since Prof. J. Martinell knew about the wide geological and palaeontological vision that Jordi Maria had demonstrated during his degree, he made him change his mind and convinced him to carry out an ichnological study. Eventually, he defended in 1992 the Master thesis entitled ‘Estructures de bioturbació en el Pliocè marí del Baix Llobregat’ (Bioturbation structures in the marine Pliocene of the Baix Llobregat, Univesitat de Barcelona). Jordi Maria’s way on Ichnology began.

From 1992 to 1995 and again under the supervision of Prof. J. Martinell, Jordi Maria earned a predoctoral FPU grant in the Universitat de Barcelona (Earth Sciences PhD programme) to develop the doctoral thesis. During this time, besides become a member of the research group PaleoNeoMed (to which he belonged uninterruptedly until the day of his death), he also had opportunity to do several short stays in different foreign research centres. Among them, that held in the University of Reading (UK) under the supervision of Prof. Roland Goldring was the most important with respect to his overall understanding of Ichnology. Although it is true that Prof. J. Martinell (more interested in bioerosion) introduced Jordi Maria to the ichnology world, Prof. R. Goldring was the one who opened his eyes to the world of bioturbation and who gave the final push for his development as ichnologist.

Finally in January 1996, he obtained his PhD degree with the dissertation entitled ‘Icnologia de le conques marines pliocenes del marge nord-occidental de la Mediterrània’ (Ichnology of the marine Pliocene basins in the northwestern Mediterranean margin). This PhD thesis, besides to be the first doctoral dissertation dedicated exclusively to ichnology submitted in a Spanish university, also constitutes the first compendium of ichnological terms translated to the Catalan language. Anecdotically, it is noteworthy that Prof. Richard G. Bromley (Københavns Universitet), Prof. Roland Goldring (University of Reading), Dr Eduardo Mayoral (Universidad de Huelva), Dr Rosa Domènech (Universitat de Barcelona) and Dr Josep Serra (Universitat de Barcelona) were the members of his thesis tribunal.

One year later to defend his PhD thesis, Jordi Maria got a postdoctoral grant from the Spanish Government to do a two-year stay (from January 1997 to December 1998) in the University of Utah under the supervision of Prof. Allan A. Ekdale. Once the grant period was over, the University of Utah hired him as an associate professor for five months more. This period was the origin of the great friendship, that from then and until the day of Jordi Maria’s death, they professed for one another.

Back in Barcelona, he returned to the Universitat de Barcelona firstly as associate teacher (late 1999), assistant, lecturer and finally as tenured professor (professor agregado), a position got in 2006 and held until the day of his death. During this time (almost 13 years), he taught ‘Paleontology’, ‘Ichnology’ and ‘Geological Mapping’ for undergraduate and graduate students. In his task as research supervisor, he directed Geology degree projects (e.g. R. Robles Salcedo, Spain), Master theses (e.g. A.R. Molinu, Italy; Z. Belaústegui, Spain; J. Villegas-Martín, Cuba), postdoctoral stays (Dr C. Cónsole, CONICET, Argentina) and the doctoral thesis of Z. Belaústegui, who was his first and only PhD student.

Jordi Maria published around 80 scientific papers and 16 book chapters. He erected seven new ichnotaxa: (A) Sinusischnus sinuosus (nov. igen., nov. isp.) from the Mediterranean Pliocene (Gibert, 1996a); (B) Diopatrichnus odlingi (nov. isp.) from the Middle Jurassic of Oxfordshire, UK (Gibert, 1996b); (C) Undichna gosiutensis (nov. isp.) from the Jurassic of Utah (Gibert, 2001); (D) Undichna unisulca (nov. isp.) from the Early Cretaceous Spanish localities of El Montsec and Las Hoyas (Gibert et al., 1999); (E) Ophiomorpha puerilis (nov. isp.) and (F) Cylindrichnus helix (nov. isp.) from the Pleistocene of southern Brazil (Gibert et al., 2006); and (G) Trypanites ionasi (nov. isp.), the first trace fossil evidence of bone-eating worms in whale carcasses (Muñiz et al., 2010). Along with his co-authors, he proposed a new ethological category Fixichnia (Gibert et al., 2004); which is totally accepted today. Together with Prof. A.A. Ekdale, he suggested a useful terminology referred to bioglyphs (Ekdale & Gibert, 2010). There are many interesting contributions, but this is just a small sample of Jordi Maria’s research.

Also related with the ichnotaxonomy, at this moment four new ichnotaxa have been dedicated to Jordi Maria: (A) Artichnus giberti Belaústegui et al., 2014; (B) Crininicaminus giberti Seike et al., 2014; (C) Macaronichnus segregatis degiberti Rodríguez-Tovar & Aguirre, 2014; and (D) Egbellichnus jordidegiberti Hyžný et al., 2015.

The exchange of information with other ichnologists and palaeontologists over the world was very important for Jordi Maria. He participated in many national and international meetings with around 99 contributions (among posters, talks and conferences) and was part of the organising committee of four of them: (A) the Third International Bioerosion Workshop (Barcelona, 2000); (B) the Second International Meeting on Taphonomy and fossilisation – TAPHOS’05 (Barcelona, 2005); (C) the Workshop on Crustacean Bioturbation – Fossil and Recent (Lepe, Huelva, 2010); and (D) the XXVII Meeting of the Spanish Society of Palaeontology (Sabadell, 2011).

His compromise with the world of science, and in particular with the Palaeontology, was not limited to research. He was scientific adviser of the ‘Museu de la Ciència de Barcelona – CosmoCaixa’ (2000–2006), treasurer of the Spanish Society of Palaeontology (2005–2011), co-founder andJordi MartinellJordi Martinell treasurer of the International Ichnological Association (2005–2012), member of the Institute for Research of Biodiversity of the Universitat de Barcelona and member of the National Agency of Evaluation and Prospective of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (2010–2012). He was also part of the editorial board of several scientific journals: Bulletin of the Catalan Institute of Natural History (since 2000), Geologica Acta (associate editor 2004–2009 and editor since 2010) and Ichnos (since 2005).

With respect to the divulgation of science via internet, he created the ‘Forum on trace fossils – Skolithos’ (http://www.rediris.es/list/info/skolithos.html) in 2000; today 130 ichnologists around the world use this distribution list. In 2003, he created the official webpage of the research group PaleoNeoMed (http://www.ub.edu/paleoneomar/; where it is possible to check the complete scientific CV of Jordi Maria) and 4 years later (2007), the blog of this group (http://paleoneomed.blogspot.com.es/). In 2007, he devised the fun project ‘Ichnovoices’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD0PH5i_EuE). And in 2012, his last project in internet was the blog ‘Infaunal Epiphany’ (https://infaunalepiphany.wordpress.com/), by which he wanted to divulgate science ‘for all audiences’.

To conclude this tribute, we would like to comment that with this brief text, we have tried to expose a brief vision of different academic and personal aspects of Jordi Maria’s life. For us, Jordi Maria was not only a research team member, disciple, supervisor, adviser or great colleague; he was a really important person in our lives, a true friend. We were lucky to share all these years with him and his memory will be unforgettable and inspiring for us.

Jordi Martinell and Zain Belaústegui
Departament d'Estratigrafia, Paleontologia i Geociències Marines, IRBio (Biodiversity Research Institute), Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Martí i Franquès s/n, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
[email protected] (J. Martinell), [email protected] (Z. Belaústegui)