Re: growth of paleo

[Hilbrecht@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Heinz Hilbrecht)]

I find it interesting to see this analysis of publication frequency but
what happened with the character of the publications through time? In the
early days papers like "A new occurrence of <speciesname> in
<geographic_name>" and large taxonomic monographs were frequent (the
stadium of description and mapping of phenomena in the early evolution of a
science field). Both types of papers are difficult to publish today. The
number of publications that link paleontological information to more
general paleobiological and/or environmental processes seems to be larger
to me since the eighties. Is this statistically significant or only my
subjective impression? The pessimistic interpretation ("decline of the
field") may not be true then. Paleontology may only approach a new stadium
in its evolution.



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Heinz Hilbrecht
Geological Institute, ETH Zentrum, Sonneggstr. 5, CH-8092 Zuerich, Switzerland
Tel.: ++41-1-63 23676, Fax: ++41-1-63 21080, e-mail: Hilbrecht@erdw.ethz.ch
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