Without a resident population of informed experts, the study of the geology of Jamaica during the nineteenth century relied upon visits by peripatetic specialists. Such visitors were rare, coming about every 35 years or so: H.T. De la Beche (mid–1820s), Lucas Barrett and J.G. Sawkins (1860s), and R.T. Hill (late 1890s). The theory and practice of geology had moved on with every visit. In the 1920s and 1930s, with improved international travel, geologists were more common visitors. C.A. Matley, of the second geological survey of the island, and C.T. Trechmann, a wealthy amateur, sought data that supported their conflicting theories of Jamaica's geological evolution, although their primary interests were field mapping and paleontology, respectively. At the same time, W.P. Woodring described the diverse mollusks of the Bowden shell bed, a key biostratigraphic horizon in the Antillean Neogene, without actually visiting the island until much later. Following the Second World War, the foundation of the modern Geological Survey Department based in Kingston encouraged new field studies, under the leadership of V.A. Zans and L.J. Chubb. Following Draper's model, the geological evolution of the island is considered to have involved four phases: island arc volcanism during much of the Cretaceous; early Paleogene uplift and intrusion; mid-Cenozoic quiescence and limestone deposition; and late Cenozoic tectonic revival. This framework relies on a plate tectonic synthesis which was only formulated after the death or retirement from active research of the geologists that form the focus of this volume.

ABSTRACT (S.K. Donovan) Henry Thomas De la Beche (1796–1855) was one of a distinguished group of gentleman geologists whose activities and abilities inspired and drove the Geological Society in London in the first half of the nineteenth century. De la Beche, both a devoted field geologist and, later, an expert administrator, is best remembered for his contribution as the first director of the first national geological survey, that of Great Britain. De la Beche was also the first Antillean geologist, visiting Jamaica for a year in 1823–1824 to inspect his family estate at Halse Hall, parish of Clarendon. In Jamaica, De la Beche made a geological map of the eastern half of the island, a tremendous achievement for one man in 12 months; the principal features of this map are still recognizable to the modern geologist. De la Beche identified the main lithological divisions of the Jamaican rock record; his white limestone formation is still current, as the White Limestone Group, for the most extensive lithological unit on the island. De la Beche's correlation of the lower part of this formation (= Yellow Limestone Group of modern usage), containing giant Cerithium snails (= Campanile trevorjacksoni Portell and Donovan, 2008), with European successions containing similar fossils was the earliest example of intercontinental biostratigraphic correlation. His intercontinental lithostratigraphic correlations were erroneous, but accepted at a time when the value of biostratigraphy was poorly understood. In particular, his recognition of many pre-Cretaceous deposits was a glaring, if understandable, error based on De la Beche's correlations which relied on lithostratigraphic similarities between European and Jamaican formations.

ABSTRACT (S.K. Donovan) Lucas Barrett (1837–1862) was a highly respected young naturalist when appointed as director of the first Geological Survey of Jamaica in 1859. His previous scientific experiences were varied, including dredging for marine benthos with Robert M'Andrew (1802–1873) and curator of the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge, as assistant to the Reverend Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873). Although his practical abilities included producing a geological map of Cambridgeshire, he had hitherto not worked as part of a geological survey and was not familiar with Caribbean conditions. In contrast, his assistant in Jamaica, James Gay Sawkins (1806–1878), had been the assistant geologist in the survey of Trinidad, but lacked Barrett's abilities, particularly as a biostratigrapher. Sawkins appears to have resented being subordinate to a younger and less experienced man. The survey started in eastern Jamaica, where Barrett soon recognized Cretaceous fossils in rocks that were mapped as Paleozoic by De la Beche on lithological evidence. Despite internal (Sawkins) and external pressures (mainly disgruntled mine owners), the survey continued and Barrett instigated a program of dredging to facilitate dating of Cenozoic rocks using Lyellian statistics. In 1862, Barrett was a commissioner for Jamaica at the International Exhibition in London. He returned to Jamaica with a diving dress. He was using this apparatus when he died on 19 December 1862, most probably due to a pulmonary air embolism (the “bends”). The survey was completed with Sawkins as the new director.

Robert Thomas Hill Jr. (1858–1941) was called both the “Father of Texas Geology” and the “Father of Antillean and Isthmian Geology” in his own lifetime. Hill was the preeminent field geologist of his day and the first American to play a prominent role in Caribbean crustal studies. Hill's working life included spells with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and various geological speculations which failed to make his fortune. His Antillean research spanned a brief period, from the mid-1890s to ~1900, and was supported by the fortune of Alexander Agassiz, who commissioned Hill to search for evidence of foundered continental connections and changes of sea level. Hill's major Caribbean surveys included the Isthmus of Panama and the principal islands of the Greater Antilles, and major reports were published on these areas. Hill visited Jamaica in 1896 and 1897, and made over 800 miles of geological traverses. His geological base map was that of Sawkins, whose survey Hill criticized for its failure to determine the correct geological succession of the island, a shortcoming that he corrected. Based on this research, Hill determined the geological history of Jamaica for the first time, an interpretation that remains modern in concept.

In contrast to the geological investigations of Jamaica during the nineteenth century, which were separated by periods of tens of years, three notable geologists, one American (Woodring) and two Englishmen, pursued different research programs on the island between the First and Second World Wars. Wendell Phillips Woodring wrote a comprehensive monograph of the benthic mollusks of the Bowden shell bed, describing ~610 species, in the process making it the most famous and well-researched stratigraphic unit on the island. Lyellian statistics indicated the Bowden shell bed was Miocene; modern biostratigraphy shows it to be Upper Pliocene; but Woodring did not visit Bowden until 1952. Charles Alfred Matley was a career civil servant and skilled amateur geologist who recognized the significance of the Mona Complex (deformed basement) in northwest Wales. On retirement, he was appointed to lead the second geological survey of Jamaica (1921–1924). Matley published a new map and posthumous memoir on the geology of the Kingston region. He also identified what he thought was a Basal Complex under Jamaica, analogous to the Mona Complex, and suggested that the Antil-lean islands were deposited on an ancient continental basement. This was contested by the wealthy and eccentric amateur Charles Taylor Trechmann. A paleontologist with wide experience of island geology, Trechmann disagreed with Matley's evidence for a pre-Cretaceous basement to Jamaica and formulated his own Theory of Mountain Uplift, involving lunar attraction, gravity tectonics, and metamorphic changes at shallow crustal depths under the influence of sea water. Neither theory engendered more than very limited interest, and both are now considered erroneous and based on the preconceptions of their respective authors.

ABSTRACT (S.K. Donovan) Dr. Verners Aleksandrs Zans was a Latvian geologist with wide interests who worked as an associate professor at the University of Riga until 1944. After the Second World War, he and his family were interned in a camp for displaced persons near Hamburg, where they lived until Zans was appointed government geologist in Jamaica, at the head of the modern Geological Survey Department. Zans and his family arrived in Jamaica in October 1949. The Survey grew and flourished under Zans. His work in Jamaica was diverse, including studies of mineral deposits, bauxite genesis, karst hydrology, and the marine physiography of the near shore. Zans formulated a new theory of bauxite formation, alumina-rich deposits derived from older, but topographically higher, beds accumulating in karst depressions on the surface of the mid-Cenozoic White Limestone Group. Under his leadership the Survey published the 1958 1:250,000 provisional geological map of Jamaica, the first new map of the island since 1865. Zans died unexpectedly in September 1961.