One piece of wood, lots of info
- Vivienne Rowland
Professor Marion Bamford delivers her inaugural lecture
A lot of information about past generations and for future ones can be garnered from a simple leaf or piece of wood, says Professor Marion Bamford, a palaeobotany researcher from the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute.
Professor Bamford delivered her inaugural lecture on Thursday, 15 May 2014 to an audience of academic peers, fellow researchers, students, Wits staff members and members of her family.
The lecture was titled The many branches of a tree: a personal view of Palaeobotany in Africa and included a vast reflection on Bamford’s various research projects, both locally and on the African continent.
“Lots of information can be gained from fossil plants. It can aid in putting together maps of areas, of who lived there, what the climate was like, the rainfall and prevalent temperatures, seasonal changes, whether there was use of controlled fires, if it has or had any medicinal value, which faunal family it belonged to, and if it was a forefather of a current faunal family,” says Bamford.
She elaborated on her travels in Africa and in South Africa – most notably the Olduvai Gorge, the Wonderwerk Cave, Botswana, the Eastern Cape, the Sibudu Caves and East and Central Africa, in the search for information about plant fossils and our family members from long ago, and the areas they inhabited. “Many of my projects, although separate, revolve around plants, vegetation, Palaeoenvironment and the climate,” says Bamford.
Biography of Professor Marion Bamford
Marion Bamford was born and educated in Zimbabwe, obtaining her A levels from Townsend Girls High School, Bulawayo in 1979.
She came to Wits in 1980 to begin a BSc degree, majoring in Botany and Microbiology and graduated in 1983. She completed her BSc Honours in 1983 doing a combined course in Botany and Palaeobotany. Her Master’s degree dissertation was on the Palaeobotany of the Early Cretaceous Kirkwood flora for which she was awarded a distinction in 1986.
Before she completed her doctoral thesis she began working at the Geological Survey in Pretoria as a palaeobotanist under the guidance of Dr Eva Kovacs-Endrody. She completed her degree in 1989 and graduated in 1990.
After a short break, Bamford rejoined Wits to take up a postdoctoral fellowship with funding from De Beers, this time doing research on fossil wood, dating and palaeoclimate associated with the diamond deposits on the West Coast.
As there were no fossil wood experts in Africa Bamford went to Brussels for training with the late Roger Dechamps at the Musée Royale de l’Afrique Centrale and then also to the University Paris-6 for training from Dr Jean-Claude Koeniguer and the University of Claude Bernard in Lyon with Professor Yves Lemoigne and Dr Marc Philippe.
Apart from working on the ancient fossil gymnosperm woods of southern Africa, Bamford also works on dicot woods, charcoal, fossilised seeds, leaves, culms, pollen and phytoliths from archaeological sites and early hominid sites in South and East Africa. Marion is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa, and a National Research Foundation B3-rated scientist, having published over 80 scientific journal articles, eight book chapters and over 50 conference presentations.
Currently she is a Personal Professor in the Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI) at Wits.
Professor Bamford lectures palaeobotany to geology and biology students at Wits at undergraduate and honours level.
Currently she is supervising seven PhD students and hosting two postdoctoral fellows. Apart from reviewing many manuscripts for journals and funding proposals for the NRF, PAST and other international bodies, she serves on the Wits Faculty of Science’s Graduate Studies Committee, the ESI Management Committee, the ESI Postgraduate Committee and several local and international professional societies.