| Summary: | Martin Brasier, Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Oxford and Adjunct Professor at Memorial University, Newfoundland until his retirement in 2013, died in a car accident on 16 December 2014. He is most famous for his outstanding studies of the early biosphere, from the first appearance of life on Earth to that of essentially ‘modern’ animals and protists in the Cambrian. The enormous influence he had in this field, and the respect that he inspired, are evident from the meeting held in his honour in Oxford on his retirement in 2013 (http://www.palaeocast.com/evolution-and-early-life/), and the award of the Lyell Medal by the Geological Society of London in 2014. However, his contributions to science extended in many directions, among them the emerging discipline of astrobiology where he applied his research in Precambrian palaeobiology to the search for life on Mars. His achievements in both these fields have been explored in other memorials (e.g. Wacey, 2015; McMahon & Cockell, 2015; McLoughlin et al., 2015). Here, we will emphasise his work on modern benthic ecosystems and particularly foraminifera. This has received less attention than other parts of his scientific output, although the study of microfossils, a topic on which he published a standard textbook (Brasier, 1980a; a second edition by Armstrong & Brasier, appeared in 2005), is a theme that underpinned his research. Incidentally, the book was written while Martin was in bed recovering from a slipped disc acquired while collecting large rock samples for microfossil papers on the Cambrian of …
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