Geology
Jack Wills’s researches started with the plant and animal fossils of the Keuper sediments exposed in quarries around Bromsgrove, and he retained a lifelong interest in the continental deposits and fossils of the Upper Paleozoic and Triassic.
He wrote accounts of new ostracoderm fishes from the late Silurian and Devonian, and became a particular specialist on terrestrial arthropods, notably with delicate dissections and interpretations of fossilized Triassic scorpions and Carboniferous eurypterids. He developed ingenious methods of dissection, revealing details even of their respiratory and reproductive organs.
His research work then took him into Lower Paleozoic stratigraphy, the Trias to Quaternary succession of the Severn valley and the origin of the Ironbridge Gorge. His interests developed into more recent geological history, the Pleistocene deposits of the Midlands, and the evidence for extensive, ice-dammed lakes of which one, named by him Lake Lapworth (after Charles Lapworth the Professor at Birmingham until 1913), covered most of the north-west Midlands.
However, the work which was to earn him lasting fame was the putting together of all then available information on surface and subsurface structures with the aim of producing a sequential picture of the geological evolution of the British Isles. This work continued until his last paper at the age of 93.
Read more about this topic: Leonard Johnston Wills