John Alfred Talent

For the Dutch cyclist, see John Talen.

John Alfred Talent
Born	(1932-10-18)18 October 1932 Ascot Vale, Victoria, Australia
Died	27 March 2024 (2024-03-28) (aged 91)
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	University of Melbourne
Known for	Role in uncovering Himalayan fossil hoax Devonian geology and life
Scientific career
Fields	Geology Palaeontology
Institutions	Department of Mines, Melbourne, Australia; Institut royal des sciences naturelles, Brussels, Belgium (Research Associate), Division of Geological Sciences, California Institute of Technology (visiting Associate Professor); Dacca University (professor); Macquarie University (professor)
Thesis	Contributions to the stratigraphy and palaeontology of the Silurian and Devonian of Gippsland (1959)
Doctoral advisor	Edmund Dwen Gill

John Alfred Talent (18 October 1932 – 27 March 2024) was an Australian geologist and palaeontologist whose research and teaching career was spent largely at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is remembered particularly for leading the effort in the 1980s and 1990s to expose the large body of fraudulent publications by Vishwa Jit Gupta of Panjab University, which is collectively known as the Himalayan fossil hoax.

Biography

Talent was born to Alfred George Talent and Thelma Emily (née Henderson) at Ascot Vale, Victoria. He studied science at the University of Melbourne, graduating in science with majors in geology, chemistry and mathematics in 1952 (or 1953) and completing his master's degree in 1955 with a dissertation on Studies in the stratigraphy and paleontology of some paleozoic limestones of Eastern Victoria. He obtained a PhD in 1959 on the thesis Contributions to the stratigraphy and palaeontology of the Silurian and Devonian of Gippsland. He also completed bachelor of arts in 1966 with majors in French and fine arts with a minor in Arabic.

Talent was awarded the a post-doctoral fellowship from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) with which he spent time in Brussels, Belgium, between 1961 and 1962. He worked there as Research Associate at the Institut royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique (the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences). He was initially employed as a geologist under the Department of Mines, Government of Victoria. In early 1967, he was visiting faculty at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Late in the year he got appointment in the faculty of the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, as UNESCO professor. In 1969, he joined the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, a newly established faculty at Macquarie University. After normal retirement, he was elected Emeritus Professor, the position he held till his death.

Talent served as president of the International Palaeontological Association in 1999. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1996.

Contributions

His interests covered many fossil animal taxa, particularly brachiopods and conodonts. He worked collaboratively with scientists in many other countries, notably Russia, as well as in Australia where his principal collaborator Ruth Mawson and numerous graduate students helped to build a legacy of inter-related publications. Mass extraction of silicified fossils from limestone samples using a specially built facility at Macquarie University provided ample material for these studies.

Talent was a long-term contributor to the International Commission on Stratigraphy's Subcommission on Devonian Stratigraphy, working to align geological time-intervals around the world.

Unmasking the Himalayan fossil hoax

Although it had been clear to many Indian palaeontologists that Vishwa Jit Gupta's work on the geology of the Himalayas contained so many implausible statements that it was useless as a basis for subsequent work, the full extent of the anomalies was unclear because it had been assumed that the problems were caused by incompetence. Talent and collaborators worked diligently for several years to catalogue the various types of misrepresentation involved, concluding that deliberate deception by Gupta took many forms, that his body of work was "fictitious".

Eponymy

Talent had many species and genera named in his honour, including:

Classis: Bivalvia:

• Cornellites talenti Johnson, 1991
• Notonucula talenti Bradshaw, 1999

Classis: Cephalopoda:

• Talenticeras talenti Erben, 1965
• Talenticeras Erben, 1965

Classis Conodonta

• Icriodus talenti Ashouri, 2006
• Polygnathus talenti Bardashev, Weddige & Ziegler, 2002

Classis: Gastropoda

• Palaeoalvania talenti Yoo, 1994

Classis: Pterobranchia

• Stelechocladia talenti Rickards & Wright, 1997

Classis: Trilobita:

• Australoscutellum talenti Holloway & Lane, 2016
• Homalonotus talenti Sandford, 2005
• Proteus talenti Chatterton, 1971

Phylum: Brachiopoda:

• Atrypina talenti Savage, 1970
• Molongella talenti Savage, 1974
• Notoconchidium talenti Wright & Garratt, 2013
• Reticulariopsis talenti Lenz & Johnson, 1985
• Spinella talenti Johnson, 1970
• Talentella Johnson, 1990

Phylum Arthropoda, Classis Branchiopoda

• Cyzicus talenti Tasch, 1987