Merlynd K. Nestell               

For the past 30 years, I have held a joint appointment in the Mathematics and Geology (now Earth and Environmental Sciences) departments at The University of Texas at Arlington. My mathematical interest centers on integral equations and their applications and my geological interest has focused primarily on the biostratigraphy of accreted terranes in the Pacific Northwest with emphasis on the distribution of conodonts and fusulinids. For the past 10 years, I have been working with Galina Pronina Nestell on Middle and Late Permian foraminifer faunas from the Crimea, Greece, North Caucasus, and West Texas. In the past few years, Galina and I have been working on the integration of the biostratigraphic data concerning foraminifers, conodonts, and radiolarians present in strata of the Bell Canyon Formation (late Middle Permian) and its stratigraphic equivalents in the Guadalupe and Apache mountains. A long monograph on the conodont biostratigraphy of the Lower Permian of Kansas with Darwin Boardman (Oklahoma State) and Bruce Wardlaw (USGS) (Sequence stratigraphy and conodont taxonomy and biostratigraphy of Late Carboniferous and Early Permian strata in Mid-Continent North America) is in press at the Kansas Geological Survey for publication. Many of my former graduate students have worked on stratigraphic problems relating to the Middle-Upper Pennsylvanian and Lower Permian strata in north-central Texas. Currently (2008), I have two students, M. Sweatt working on Permian rocks in the Apache Mountains, and C. Leyva working on Pennsylvanian (Virgilian) rocks in North Central Texas.

Publications