Carol Faul

Carol was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1934. At some point in her youth or young adulthood, she contracted polio, a disease caused by a highly contagious virus. Polio epidemics occurred in the United States from the 1890s to the mid-1900s; cases peaked in 1952 and declined after polio vaccines were developed and distributed beginning in the 1950s. Polio was feared because in a small percentage of cases (0.5%)—still numbering thousands of people in the United States during years that had large outbreaks—the poliovirus causes paralysis, which sometimes leads to death. As a result of having had polio, Carol experienced lower-body paralysis and used a wheelchair.

Carol attended college at the University of Buffalo, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. For her master’s research, she worked on eurypterids (sea scorpions). She began her career at the Buffalo Museum of Science in 1955 and became the museum’s Curator of Geology in 1959. During her time there, she wrote articles and reviews for the museum’s magazine, Science on the March (formerly called Hobbies). Some of her articles were also circulated as stand-alone pamphlets, including “Common fossils of western New York,” a basic introduction to invertebrate fossils of western New York. She taught in the museum’s adult education classes and served as the Secretary of the Geological Section, Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences.

In 1959, mastodon bones were discovered near Byron in western New York. Carol led the initial investigation of what is now known as the Byron Dig or Hiscock Site. While overseeing the excavation, she searched for fossils in the marshy pit alongside her colleagues, creating adaptive solutions as needed. Carol briefly described the results of the excavation in an article for Science on the March:

“. . . a mastodon was reported on the farm of Charles D. Hiscock near Byron, Genessee County. It was discovered under about three feet of muck and was in the muck and underlying gray clay. The specimen was in a pond excavation.

The initial find included several teeth and fragmentary bones. Subsequent excavations by the Buffalo Museum of Science disclosed two tusks over five feet in length and various bones including mineralized pelvic fragments.”

— Carol Heubusch (1959) “Mastodons and mammoths in western New York”

Further excavations at the site were not undertaken until the 1980s. By that time, Carol was no longer on staff at the museum. The later excavations, performed over several decades, uncovered abundant mastodon remains and many other animals, as well as some artifacts left by humans.

In 1962, Carol left the museum to pursue her Ph.D. at Harvard University. Carol was also elected to the Council of the Geological Society of America in 1962. She was the only woman out of 220 people elected to the council that year.

Carol married geologist Henry Faul (1920–1981), who began working as Professor and Chair in the Department of Geology, University of Pennsylvania, in 1966. Carol also joined the Department of Geology, University of Pennsylvania, in 1966 as an Associate. In late 1973, Carol and Henry traveled to Tunisia in northern Africa to do geological fieldwork. They wrote a short article about their trip for Science on the March, in which they described collecting Permian fossils:

“In some parts of the section, fossils are difficult to get out because they are weaker than the rock itself and large blocks have to be collected for laboratory treatment. In other spots fossils weather out in abundance and can be picked up by the pailful. We found some good collecting on the weathered piles of shale tossed out of the trenches dug by the German army during World War II.”

— Carol Heubusch Faul and Henry Faul (1974) “Fossil collecting in the Upper Permian rocks of Tunisia”

Carol and Henry taught in Shiraz, Iran, in 1974, while on sabbatical (basically, a paid, temporary leave of absence granted to university faculty so that they can pursue research or other forms of professional enrichment). Carol later coauthored a book with Henry—It began with a stone: A history of geology from the Stone Age to the age of plate tectonics—finishing it herself after his death. It was published in 1983. In the preface, she added an apt acknowledgment to the women geologists who have often been overlooked:

“Readers will note that there is a paucity of women mentioned in this history of the Earth sciences. I wish to acknowledge the contributions of the multitude of anonymous women who were surely there influencing the ‘founders’ of geology.”

— Carol Faul (1983) preface to It Began with a Stone

Late in her career, Carol wrote about the history of geology. She died in 1989.

Selected works by Carol (Heubusch) Faul

Faul, C. 1978. Geology as a career for the disabled. Pp. 150–153 in H. Hofman, ed. A Working Conference on Science Education for Handicapped Students: Proceedings (April 3–5, 1978). ERIC. Link

Faul, C. 1985. A history of geology at the University of Pennsylvania: Benjamin Franklin and the rest. In E.T. Drake and W.M. Jordan, eds. Geologists and ideas: A history of North American Geology. Centennial Special Volume 1. Link

Faul, C.H. and H. Faul. 1974. Fossil collecting in the Upper Permian rocks of Tunisia. Science on the March 54(2): 16–18.

Faul, H., and C. Faul. 1983. It began with a stone: A history of geology from the Stone Age to the age of plate tectonics. J. Wiley, New York.

Heubusch, C.A. no date. Common Fossils of Western New York. Buffalo Museum of Science. Link [First printed in Hobbies in 1957.]

Heubusch, C.A. 1959. Mastodons and mammoths in western New York. Science on the March 40: 3–9.

Heubusch, C.A. 1962. Preservation of the intestine in three specimens of Eurypterus. Journal of Paleontology 36: 222–224. Link

Kjellesvig-Waering, E.N., and C.A. Heubusch. 1962. Some Eurypterida from the Ordovician and Silurian of New York. Journal of Paleontology 36: 211–221. Link

Shagam, R., and C. Faul. 1987. Charles Doughty as geologist. Pp. 163–185 in S.E. Tabachnick, ed. Explorations in Doughty’s Arabia Deserta. The University of Georgia Press, Athens and London.

Zhang, D., and C. Faul. 1988. A history of geology and geological education in China (to 1949). Earth Sciences History 7: 27–32. Link

Biographical references & further reading

Anonymous. 1959. Museum News. Science on the March 39(5): 102–103.

Anonymous. 1981. Death notice for Dr. Henry Faul. Almanac (University of Pennsylvania) 28(4): 8. Link

Beaubien, J. 2012. Wiping out polio: How the U.S. snuffed out a killer. Shots, health news from NPR, 15 October 2020. Link

Bell, K. 1984. No stone unturned. Nature 308: 797–797. Link

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): What is Polio? Link

Fischer, R.V. 1962. Spring meetings of the GSA Council. Geological Society of America Bulletin 73: P39–44.

Hallam, A. 1984. Centuries of geology: It began with a stone. Science 223: 925–925. Link

Hofman, H. 1978. A working conference on science education for handicapped students: Proceedings (April 3–5, 1978). ERIC. Link

Janssen, V. 2020. When polio triggered fear and panic among parents in the 1950s. History, 2 April 2020. Link

Laub, R.S. no date. A Hiscock primer. 10 pgs. Link

Laub, R.S., M.F. DeRemer, C.A. Dufort, and W.L. Parsons. 1988. The Hiscock Site: A rich late Quaternary locality in western New York state. In R.S. Laub, N.G. Miller, and D.W. Steadman, eds. Late Pleistocene and early Holocene paleoecology and archeology of the eastern Great Lakes Region. Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences 33: 67–81.

Leacock, K., and W. Engelbrecht. 2018. Marian E. White (1921–1975): Action archaeologist. Ontario Archaeology 97: 121–130.

Ochmann, S., and M. Roser. 2017. Polio. OurWorldInData.org. Link

Owens, H.B. 2011. History’s latest chapter about to close on the ‘Byron Dig.’ The Batavian, 30 July 2011. Link