Adegoke Sylvester is a Geologist from Ondo town, born July 1937. Adegoke coordinated the industrial studies of the extensive tar send bitumen-bearing beds of Ondo, Ogun and Bendel States within which heavy and extra-heavy crude oil is known to exist and which forms the basis for the production of lubricants, automatic fuels, sulphur, petrochemicals and other important industrial chemicals.
Adegoke’s education took place in Aquinas College, Akure and the University of Ibadan where he obtained a degree in Zoology in 1962. His career in Geology developed from the University of California, Berkeley, California, USA, 1963-66 where he had his post graduate degrees. Adegoke joined Obafemi Awolowo University Ile Ife as a lecturer in 1967, becoming a professor at the age of 34. To his credit are six monographs and 85 articles on geology in national and international learned journal, one of which was the monumental study of the stratigraphy and palaeontology of the Ewekoro formation of Southwestern Nigeria. There he identified over 200 fossil species most of which were new to science. He also attempted to establish the old geological postulation about the close physical proximity of the West African landmass to the coastal stretches of the both North and South America.