ONE OF THE FIRST (IN LOVING MEMORY OF THE OUTSTANDING RESEARCHER OF MESOZOIC PALEONTOLOGY AND STRATIGRAPHY IN UKRAINE VALERIA GAVRYLIVNA DULUB)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of Valeria Gavrylivna Dulub, a famous researcher of geology, paleontology and stratigraphy of the Western and Southern Ukraine. Valeriya Dulub (Gvozdeva) is one of the first graduates of the Geological Faculty of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (1947). She became one of the first paleontologists who studied the stratigraphy of the Mesozoic sediments in the west of Ukraine by foraminifera and also researched Mesozoic deposits in Predobrogean Depression, Crimea, in the Black Sea shelf. For almost half a century, V.G. Dulub worked at the Ukrainian State Geological Research Institute in Lviv. She studied foraminifera of the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous ages, researched stratigraphy, paleoecology, sedimentology, and geological structure of western and southern Ukraine. She applied and modernized the complex methodology of foraminifera study, which includes their researches in the washed fraction and in thinsections that is especially important to carbonate reef formations of Late Jurassic. She singled out and monographically described eight new species of foraminifera, for the first time provided a monographic description of 42 species of foraminifera from the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous of Precarpathians. V. G. Dulub studied the Jurassic biostratigraphy based on foraminifera and was the main developer of stratigraphic schemes of Jurassic sediments of the Carpathian Foredeep and the adjacent edge of East-European platform. She was one of the first geologists who diagnosed the buried Upper Jurassic reef in Precarpathians and determined the regularities of replacement of reef facies zones, reconstructed the history of development of Jurassic paleobasin. She also correlated the Jurassic sediments of Ukraine with the same age formations of the Mediterranean belt. V.G. Dulub was one of the first who started the development of Ukrainian geology in the western Ukraine. She took part in numerous thematic researches works of UkrDGRI and published more than 50 scientific works, which are highly valued by geologists of various specialties from many countries. She also collected a unique paleontological collection, which became the basis for further biostratigraphic and paleoecological studies.