re: biology or geology ?

From
Date

I too have a mixed background; a BSc in Microbiology, a PhD in marine
phytoplankton, and two postdocs in Quaternary micropalaeontology. Now I am
a lecturer in an Earth & Environmental Science Department teaching
Palaeontology, Oceanography, and in the summer holidays a course in
freshwater phytoplankton ecology/palaeoecology (being in Japan I also teach
English).

I have followed the recent discussion with interest and agree with many
points. I also have problems deciding what I am - a palaeobiologist or a
geologist with a biological interest. I seem to encounter problems in both
departments. As I study systematics other (more applied) biologists view me
as a 'stamp collector' with no real benefit to mankind. Whilst in geology,
because Quaternary researchers have one foot in biology, I am frequently
introduced to visiting geologists with a dismissive, "...oh and he's a
biologist". The Head of Geophysics in one establishment once held one of my
fossil taxonomic papers up by its corner and with a twisted face said "What
is this ?" [incidently, he later terminated my project !!]. Reactions like
these sometimes make us feel unwanted or angry, but the use of
palaeontology in applied geology has already been proven. Some people call
this new analytical period, the Age of the Geochemist, and say that using
fossils as environmental proxies is not precise enough. Naturally their
data is very useful to us, and they have a good marketing team when it
comes to funding which we should try to emulate, but I think we haven't
finished refining our tools yet. After all, our stratigraphy and
palaeoenvironmental reconstruction is only as good as our taxonomic
evaluation, i.e. the better our systematics, the better our
interpretations. Look at any palaeontology-related journal and new species,
new indicators and stratigraphic ranges are being reported all the time. So
I fully expect a newer, better Age of the Palaeontologist in the near
future.

If one studies the Late Quaternary, having a biological background is
essential, after all, the sediments contain only recently dead things and
preservation is usually excellent. You can make use of your studies of the
ecological preferences of the living species to reconstruct the past.
However, once you become involved in much older sediments, your indicators
are absent (i.e. nearly all the species are extinct ones with no known
preferences) and past climate reconstruction becomes a nightmare for the
biologist. This is definitely the realm of geologists, and palaeontologists
working with older sediments are totally dependent on geological
information. So I think palaeontologists can belong in both biology and
geology departments - of course some departments get out of this problem by
calling themselves Geoscience or Environmental Science - and that trying to
put us all in one place will, as one person has already said, be bad for
the survival of palaeontology in the long run. What we need to do is remain
diversified, and do the same things that we have always done, but with one
addition, we must learn to shout our message louder. In terms of funding:
the most active and loudest of the hungry chicks always gets fed first. So
we need to advertise our science at a higher profile. It also pays to have
experienced palaeontologists represented on high level committees (national
and international) so that our message doesn't fall on deaf ears.

Ric Jordan
Yamagata University

Ric W. Jordan
Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences,
Faculty of Science,
Yamagata University,
Yamagata 990
JAPAN

TEL: (81) 236-28-4645
FAX: (81) 236-28-4661