re: biology or geology ?

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Hello, Ric !

Thank you very much for your LOVELY, very encouraging words. I thoroughly
agree with what you have experienced and with what you think.

Marina Aguirre
Departamento Paleontologia Invertebrados
Museo de Ciencias naturales
Paseo del Bosque S/N
1900 la Plata
Argentina

FAX 54 21 577561
E-Mail: MAGUIRRE@ISIS.UNLP.EDU.AR

At 00:45 9/09/97 -0700, you wrote:
>
>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
>
>
>