Kenneth E. Caster

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Kenneth Edward Caster (1908–1992) was an American geologist and invertebrate paleontologist. He gained an international reputation for his research on fossil echinoderms and arthropods and the use of the facies concept in stratigraphy. He made important contributions on fossil echinoderms to the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. She graduated from Cornell University in 1931. From 1935 to 1936 he taught biology His research on invertebrate paleontology spanned geological time from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous and included fossils from 5 phyla: cephalopods and bivalves (Mollusca), eurypterids (Arthropoda), sponges (Porifera), jellyfish (Cnidaria), and Brachiopoda. His research in the Southern Hemisphere convinced him the validity of plate tectonics.

Caster's Southern Hemisphere research earned him in 1952 the Orville A. Derby Medal at the Brazilian Geological Survey Centennial and in 1956 the Gondwana Medal of the Geological Survey of India. For the academic year 1959–1960 he was the president of the Paleontological Society. In 1975 his former students honored him with a Festschrift volume. During his long career he was the author or coauthor of over 100 scientific publications, earning him in 1976 the Paleontological Society Medal. Some of the fossils collected by Kenneth E. Caster are in the Invertebrate Paleontology Collection of the Cincinnati Museum Center.

In his research he was assisted by his wife Annie. She was a geologist and illustrated many of his papers. She also illustrated Nevin Fennemen's two-volume work Physiography of western United States (1931, McGraw-Hill) and Physiography of eastern United States (1938, McGraw-Hill). Kenneth and Annie Caster gave generous help to amateur paleontologists in the Cincinnati area, In 1982, Kenneth Caster published a paper on the amateur paleontologists who flourished in the Cincinnati area near the end of the 19th century.