Douglas James Shearman

Douglas James Shearman (2 July 1918, Isleworth, Middlesex – 12 May 2003, Cassington, Oxfordshire) was a British geologist and sedimentologist, who made significant contributions to the study of evaporites and other sediments and sedimentary rocks in desert climates. His research on evaporites is important for understanding the entrapment and migration of petroleum.

Education and career After education in Hounslow Shearman joined the Royal Mail as a trainee engineer. In 1939 he enlisted in the Royal Navy. During his basic training in Dover he met in the NAAFI canteen a young soldier named Tom Pain, who was using a hand lens to examine a terebatulid fossil from the Dover chalk. Discussions over tea and doughnuts inspired Shearman to study geology. During WW II, he served as a radio operator on a minesweeper in the North Atlantic. In 1946 he enrolled at Chelsea Polytechnic, University of London, where he studied geology under William Fleet (1890–1966) and graduated in 1949 with a first class degree.

In 1961, Douglas J. Shearman and Graham Evans began to expand their research on tidal and inter-tidal sediments to areas outside England. During work, funded by the UK's DSIR and later by Shell plc, on the Trucial Coast on the Persian Gulf, Shearman's research team recorded the first known example of recent anhydrite. The team showed that anhydrite, previously known only from older rocks, is still being formed today, in tidal environments of what is now called the sabkha environment. and in Canada with John G. C. M. Fuller (1926–2012). Such research allowed sedimentologists to re-interpret ancient evaporite sequences, thus benefiting the petroleum industry. Matson Award of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (1981) Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London (1997)

Selected publications