Erling Dorf was an American geologist. He was born July 19, 1905, and died in April 1984. He was hired in 1928 as a professor of geology at Princeton University. He retired from Princeton in 1974. He was a renowned paleobotanist working on the floras of the Late Cretaceous and Paleogene. He was married to Ruth Kemmerer Dorf. They had three sons and a daughter: Thomas Alfred Dorf (1937-1958), Norman Kemmerer Dorf (1938-2007), Robert "Bob" Erling Dorf (1941- ) and Molly Dorf Purrington (1948 - ).[1]
Probably his best known research today are comprehensive articles and papers about the Yellowstone Petrified Forest where he reported the presence of conglomerates from stream deposits, breccias from mudflows or landslides, volcanic tuff from the numerous volcanic events, and lava beds.[1][2] Dorf theorized that these specimens do not merely represent one entombed forest but rather include trees from 27 separate forests (the most in the world), each stacked on top of the other, layer by layer, to a thickness of 1,200 feet (370 m). He explains that the Absaroka volcanism lasted for 15 million years. In that time, there were alternating periods of activity and dormancy. The active periods caused trees to be encased and eventually fossilized. During the ensuing dormancy, new trees grew up on top of the old, only to be encased by the next volcanic activity.[2][3]
The genus Erlingdorfia and a lake in Beartooth Pass are named after him.[citation needed] The name of the monotypic eurypterid genus Dorfopterus from the Devonian of Wyoming, in the United States, also honors Dorf.[4]