PRESENTATION OF THE CHARLES SCHUCHERT AWARD OF THE PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY TO MICHAL KOWALEWSKI/RESPONSE BY MICHAL KOWALEWSKI

Journal of Paleontology, Jul 2006 by Flessa, Karl W, Kowalewski, Michal

Fellow paleontologists, I'm delighted and honored to present to you Michal Kowalewski, this year's recipient of our Society's Charles Schuchert Award, the award we give to recognize excellence and promise among paleontologists less than 40 years in age.

I must take note here at the outset that I think that the late Toni Hoffman, Michal's MSc advisor at the University of Warsaw, would not have been surprised by Michal's receipt of this honor.

Michal joined the U.S. community of paleontologists in 1991, when he started his PhD program at the University of Arizona. And it was in the spring of 1992 when Michal joined Sally Walker and I on our first trip to the Colorado River delta. We got a lot done on that trip: we discovered large populations of the lingulid brachiopods that would form an important part of Michal's dissertation, we examined the taphonomic effects of the Chevrolet Suburban, we founded the Centra de Estudios de Almejas Muertas, and Michal got his visa extended.

Among the many challenges facing foreign students in the United States are the rules for visa extensions. In this case, the paperwork could not be done within the country; it required a visit to a U.S. consulate outside our borders. So, while still in Mexico, we put Michal, equipped with a Spanish vocabulary that ranged from "Buenos dias" all the way to "Cerveza, por favor," on a bus to Tijuana, where he spent two nights in the Zona Rosa to wait in line for his visa. He then took another bus, south of the border to Nogales, Sonora, and crossing the border there, made it back to Tucson. That adventure convinced me that Michal was somebody who, in order to get the job done, was willing to venture into the unknown, solve problems as they came up, follow unusual approaches, and wouldn't be easily discouraged.

In the field a year later, Michal came up to me, excited at a discovery he had made: a predatory drillhole in a lingulid shell. I'm afraid that I curbed my enthusiasm, but that didn't deter Michal's. We got back to Tucson on Saturday night. Monday morning, there was a manuscript on my desk. That experience told me that I was dealing with a publishing phenomenon.

His prodigious pace of publication, impressive though it is, is not the important thing. Michal weaves together the field-based, specimen-based, theory-based, and analytical approaches to our discipline. In doing so, he draws from each approach's strengths to compensate for the others' weaknesses.

Michal's major contributions fall within the realm of paleoecology and taphonomy. He is perhaps best known for his contributions to understanding the fossil record of predation, and for his work on time-averaging.

It takes both boldness and skill to tackle the issue of predation in the fossil record: at first thought, most would think that the fossil record was a poor place to look to understand the evolution of such a dynamic biotic interaction. Thankfully, paleontologists, many of whom are in the audience today, have been clever enough to get around the problems of how you can make sense out of the nibbles and holes in shells. Michal, in a very short time, joined that resourceful bunch to make important contributions of his own. Michal's initial interest in shell drilling in the Miocene of Poland (his first publication) was developed further through analyses of the morphometrics of drillholes. He went on to examine repair scars in brachiopods, drillholes through the Phanerozoic, and then coedited the double-feature PaleoSociety short course and Topics in Geobiology volumes on predation in the fossil record. But as they say on the cable TV channels, that's not all.

Michat's contributions in taphonomy are also extensive, including his dissertation work on the taphonomy of lingulid brachiopods, his work with me on the radiocarbon record of timeaveraging, his high-resolution dating of shell beds in Mexico and in Brazil, his application of ternary diagrams to taphonomic analysis, his analyses of accumulations of freshwater mussels, and his examination of accumulations of brachiopod shells off the coast of southern Brazil.

Although neither Michat nor I claim to be the first to use the fossil record as an environmental baseline in conservation biology, he has been tireless and effective at promoting and developing what we call "conservation paleobiology" as a new application for our discipline.

Michal's CV also demonstrates that he is not a "loner." He easily draws others to his efforts, works more than his fair share, and is generous with his ideas. His long list of collaboratorsfrom three continents-testifies to his ability to assemble and work in teams, and to his international reputation.

Michal is also generous in giving ideas to students, working with them, and in their professional development. He's a terrific mentor as well as a terrific colleague. This is especially evident at Virginia Tech, where he inherited a paleobiology program with a strong tradition, but at a time of some stress because of financial issues and retirements. Consider now that there have been no less than 14 presentations by Virginia Tech students in the last two GSA meetings. Michat's own work, his tireless championing of our discipline, and his success with students has kept Virginia Tech on the map as one of the major programs in the country.