Emeritus Faculty Events

The ANU Emeritus Faculty (ANUEF) periodically runs Conferences, Lectures, Excursions, Operatunities and other events of interest to Faculty Members and others. Events for which you may register your expression of interest are listed below

ANUEF events and lecture series

Unless otherwise noted, Lectures are held in The Molony Room, ANU Emeritus Faculty, Fellows Lane Cottage (Building 3T) at 4:00pm on the dates indicated.

Other events will be held at the venues and dates indicated.

Alex Ritchie with Antarctic Groenlandaspis model at the Canowindra slab

Venue: The Molony Room, ANU Emeritus Faculty, Fellows Lane Cottage (Building 3T)

Fishing With a Hammer

By Alex Ritchie

Note: You may click on the image to view it full sized

Abstract: Alex was born in Scotland and studied geology at Edinburgh University where he completed his doctorate in 1963. He lectured in Edinburgh and Sheffield Universities (1960-67) before moving to Australia as the Australian Museum's Palaeontologist (1968-95).

Alex's main research interests have always focussed on the evolution of early vertebrates, from the oldest jawless fishes (480 mya) to the Late Devonian (360 mya) when air-breathing fishes invaded dry land.

In 1969, in the South Australian Museum, he found a small fish-plate from Ordovician rocks of central Australia which he recognised as part of a jawless armoured fish - the first record from the Southern Hemisphere. More material found in the BMR collections in Canberra led to field trips to the N.T. and the discovery of two new genera of Ordovician agnathans. The later discovery of a close relative in Ordovician rocks of Bolivia, South America, confirmed they lived throughout Gondwana. Most of Alex's career has involved searching for Devonian fishes in Australia and Antarctica, especially the evolution and distribution of armoured fishes (placoderms).

In 1970-71 Alex Ritchie and Gavin Young, (now at ANU) joined a New Zealand university expedition to Antarctica to search for Devonian fish in South Victoria Land. During a 2-month expedition they recovered many important Devonian fish fossils, including bony plates of a strange armoured fish that Alex thought might be new to science.

Back in Sydney he discovered that they matched a poorly known Devonian placoderm, Groenlandaspis, found in East Greenland in 1929-31. Groenlandaspis and its relatives have since been recorded from >30 sites worldwide (Greenland, USA, Ireland, England, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Australia, Antarctica and South Africa), confirming ancient faunal links between the major continents.

In 1993 Alex's 20-year search for Groenlandaspis culminated in his rediscovery of a spectacularly rich Devonian mass-kill fossil fish site at Canowindra, NSW, containing the best-preserved Groenlandaspis specimens in the world.

Canowindra's Age of Fishes Museum, created in 2001 to house and display these fossil discoveries locally, has enormous potential to become a scientific research centre, international tourist attraction and educational facility with long-term economic benefits for central-west NSW.

Bryan Furnass

Venue: The Molony Room, ANU Emeritus Faculty, Fellows Lane Cottage (Building 3T)

From Anthropocene to Sustainocene - Challenges and Opportunities

By Bryan Furnass

Note: You may click on the image to view it full sized

Abstract: Geologists named the interglacial period which followed the development of agriculture ten millennia ago the holocene era. At a climate conference in 2000, Paul Crutzen, Nobel laureate in chemistry, declared that human impacts on the biosphere since the industrial transition 250 years ago have been so extensive as to justify naming the present era the anthropocene, which is accepted by many climate scientists.

The anthropocene has entailed harnessing energy from fossil fuels to machines for manufacturing, heating, lighting, transport, agriculture and communications. It has conferred many benefits on human health and wellbeing, including liberation from unrelenting physical toil, increased life expectancy and improved living conditions in developed countries, alongside a sevenfold global increase in population.

In terms of personal metabolism, there is a wide disparity between the one sixth of the human population suffering from under-nutrition, and a similar proportion who experience over-nutrition, including an epidemic of overweight and obesity, associated with Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and some cancers.

In terms of planetary metabolism, human activities have led to serious disruption of the ecosystems of the biosphere, including land degradation, rapid loss of biodiversity, global heating and climate disruption, from greenhouse gases released from profligate combustion of fossil fuels, and deforestation. Effects of the anthropocene over the past decade include extreme weather events, resource depletion and threats to food and water security to an unsustainable and possibly irreversible extent.

Transition from anthropocene to sustainocene will require radical political, economic and social changes. At the biosphere level, changes include population stabilization, inequalities reduction, education, and uncoupling economic development and employment from fossil fuel use and environmental destruction. In terms of personal health it will require less energy-rich foodstuffs and more physical activity.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Since retirement from the ANU Health Service, Bryan Furnass has extended his interests in the health of humans to the health of the biosphere, on which we all depend. He is a member of the Strategic Council of the Climate Institute.