Misc.

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PaleoNet has been receiving and goodly number of new subscribers each day
since I have returned from the Seattle GSA meetings.  Many thanks to
everyone who has subscribed.

While I was in Seattle I and Rich Lane made presentation about PaleoNet at
the board meetings of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), the
Cushman Society, SEPM, and the Paleontological Society (PS).  PaleoNet was
well received by all of these bodies - especially when I mentioned that
participation in PaleoNet will cost them nothing.  Seriously though, the
questions that I expected about potential conflicts between PaleoNet and
these groups own listservers, gopher holes, etc. did not materialize.

Because of problems with network communications resulting from the move of
my office within the Museum I'm way behind where I wanted to be in stocking
the PaleoNet ftp site with goodies.  This will be done in the next few
weeks and I will post an announcement on PaleoNet every time a new addition
to the ftp collection is made.  However, there are a few items currently
residing in the ftp site of which you should be aware.  These include:

(i) nine digital images of fossils made with a new technique that allows
true color images for microscopic and macroscopic materials to be
constructed that are in focus throughout the field of view.  These images
are located in the PalaeoVision directory and have been reformatted as
binhex files for downloading over the Internet.  You can use Telnet, Fetch,
Xferit, or any of a large number of ftp programs to download the files and
a binhex translation routine (available within the Compact Pro or Stuffit
Expander PD packages) to translate them back into their native PICT graphic
formats.

(ii) my own set of Macintosh routines for performing 2D or 3D eigenshape
analysis.  This is a morphometric technique which decomposes a sample of
closed curves into their hierarchical modes of shape variation.  The 2D
routines were used in a recent study of shape variation in mammalian
skeletal elements (MacLeod and Rose, 1993, Am. Jour. Sci., vol. 293-A) and
the 3D routines were developed for a paper that I still have to write up.

Expect much more software to be placed in the ftp site in the immediate future.

Last but not least, while there have been many subscribers to PaleoNet, we
need to get some discussions going.  That being the case, and having just
returned from the SVP & GSA meetings in Seattle I was struck by many of the
differences between the two meetings in terms of the different degrees of
emphasis that the vertebrate and (largely) invertebrate paleontologists
place on particular types of analysis.  The stronger emphasis toward
biostratigraphy by the invertebrate community is, of course, perfectly
understandable given the traditional role of invertebrate faunas in
high-resolution stratigraphic studies.  Nonetheless, I was struck by the
overt lack of attention given to phylogenetic questions (or phylogenetic
aspects of paleoecologic, biogeographic and even "evolutionary") studies at
the GSA meeting.  This stood in marked contrast to the SVP meeting where
cladograms and the like were very much in evidence.  For the purposes of
this discussion I'd like to avoid drifting into a debate of the pros and
cons of various phylogenetic methods (e.g., cladistics vs. evolutionary
taxonomy) and instead ask whether or not the invertebrate paleontologists
see a need for addressing the phylogenetic aspect of their data or
(conversely) why the vertebrate paleontologists see phylogenetics as such
an indispensable part of their approach to their data.  Is this just a
matter of "tradition" between these two branches of paleontology?  Is it
driven by differences in the data that the vertebrate and invertebrate
fossil records present for study?  Or did I just go to the wrong technical
sessions at the two meetings?

Because SVP and GSA were in the same city this year I know that more
vertebrate paleontologists than usual attended the GSA meetings and I would
be most interested to hear their perspectives on this (or any other)
differences between the two meetings that came to their attention.

Norm MacLeod


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Norman MacLeod
Senior Research Fellow
N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk (Internet)
N.MacLeod@uk.ac.nhm (Janet)

Address: Dept. of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum,
                     Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD

Office Phone: 071-938-9006
Dept. FAX:  071-938-9277
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