Luc Bulot

Luc Bulot (July 23, 1963 – July 27, 2022) was a French paleontologist mainly known for his work on the biostratigraphy of West Africa and on the determination of Lower Cretaceous GSSP.

Luc Bulot
Bulot in 2019
Born	July 23, 1963 Cavaillon, France
Died	July 27, 2022 Manchester, United Kingdom
Nationality	French
Scientific career
Fields	Biostratigraphy, Plate tectonics
Institutions	National Museum of Natural History, Aix-Marseille University, University of Manchester
Thesis	(1995)

Personal life

Luc Georges Bulot was born in Cavaillon, Vaucluse, France on July 23, 1963.

On October 17, 2015, he married Elsa Schnebelen in Saint-Privat-de-Champclos (Gard).^[1]

Career

Bulot graduated with a master's degree in geology from the University of Dijon and obtained a PhD at the National Museum of Natural History of Paris in 1995.

Chairman of the "Working group on the Valanginian" within the International Commission on Stratigraphy, he worked for a long time on the definition of the Lower Cretaceous GSSP.^[2]

From 2020 to 2022, he held various simultaneous positions: lead biostratigraphy expert within the North Africa Research Group, co-leader of an LCO/IFREMER/CNRS consortium based in Brest and investigating the links between biostratigraphy, sedimentology and plate tectonics, lecturer at the University of Manchester; and editor of the Arabian Journal of Geosciences (AJGS).^[3]

Notable areas of work included:

• Reconstruction of the Mesozoic paleogeography of Provence.^[4]
• Definition of the marine biostratigraphic framework of West Africa.^[5]
• Definition of Cretaceous stage limits (for the International Chronostratigraphic Chart) leading in particular to the definition of the GSSP of the Valanginian-Hauterivian transition at La Charce.^[6][7][2]
• Discovery of new species of ammonites.^[8]

Death and tributes

In July 2022, Luc Bulot died of cancer in Manchester, United Kingdom at the age of 59.^[5]

In 2023, many researchers paid tribute, in a special edition of the Journal of African Earth Science, to the extent of his work which redefined a significant part of the stratigraphy of West Africa.^[5]