Abstract
We have the aim to rescue the geologic work of William M. Gabb, into the historic frameworkof the last century. The reason Gabb came to Costa Rica was related to speculations about the presence of hugemineral deposits in Costa Rica, which woke up the cupidity of the Keith brothers.The geologic work of W. M. Gabb in Costa Rica was a big step, because he was the first geologist to make geological maps and who apported regional conclusions. Unfortunately, nobody continued his work, his geologicmap was never published until now (we areincluding a reproduction of his map). His geographic map of Talamanca was published by Petermann in the last century. He died only four years after his departuring fromCosta Rica, and this could have been the main reason, that all of his reports were not properly published. Hiswork was not only restricted to Talamanca: he also visited several volcanoes, the Candelaria range and theNicoya peninsula.He nominated around 50 new species of moluska. Stratigraphically, he understood the sucessions very well,because he wrote about the Miocene sedimentary rocks, plutonic rocks forming the nuclei of the Talamancarange, dikes of volcanites,"antillites" (as he named the fossil corals), and alluvial plains. We believe, Gabb wasmuch more an explorer-like geologist, than a man who enjoy to be into the four walls of a laboratory. This qual-ity made him able to caarry out the geologic exploration of California, Santo Domingo and Costa Rica. Whenwe compare his work through the paradigm of his epoch, Gabb results an exceptional geologist, who mademinor mistakes. His errors are related to the geologic concepts of the last century, an epoch were the structuralgeology was not developed, and the paradigmatic concept of the Western Indies avoid a better approach to themodern models. The wrong idea with respect of the existence of metamorphic rocks in Costa Rica was becauseof a translation mistake of the term "shale" to Spanish as "esquisto".Comments
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