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Dear All, We would like to draw your attention to a semi-popular website (http://www.asoldasthehills.org) that we have been developing over the past year - and in particular to one element of it, which we hope that others amongst you might want to follow. The website relates to the Middle Ordovician Builth-Llandrindod Inlier of central Wales (UK), a series of primarily siliciclastic sediments and associated igneous rocks, deposited during the emergence and erosion of a volcanic island complex. One of the objectives of the work is to present a ‘complete’ illustrated faunal list that presents the entire known biota, both described and undescribed. To date, there are 325 distinguished species, of which significantly fewer than half have been described (including those in open nomenclature!). Many of the fossil groups are very poorly known from this age in Wales, due to difficult preservation, or lack of specialists. We hope that the faunal list will be of interest to those studying Ordovician diversity, in particular. If nothing else, it illustrates the severe biases involved in collating of diversity data. The Builth Inlier has been studied intensively for centuries (the first trilobites were described from here in 1698), and we might expect that new taxa would be uncommon. In fact, almost every field session yield several new taxa, even when returning to known localities. The list is not yet remotely approaching completion; for example, microfossils have barely been investigated at all, and new macrofossils also appear with great regularity. A startling number of species are known from only one good specimen or disarticulated fragments only (including two-thirds of the echinoderms), suggesting that the number of rare species is grossly underestimated. The main purpose of this post is to encourage others among you to produce a similar resource for your own favoured area. The illustrations we have are drawings, not publishable images, but they are useful in giving some idea of the taxa represented. Too often, we suspect, the odd or not-formally-describable fossils are collected, and then forgotten about, and never reach a specialist. As a result, we get the impression that they’re not there. I’m sure you’ve all had the same experience in your favourite hunting grounds, and know about far more species than are currently described. If enough palaeontologists produce even very simple lists of this type, then we will begin to have an appreciation for real diversity patterns, and small-scale palaeobiogeographic patterns. We hope next to extend the work to include adjacent regions such as the Shelve Inlier and the Llandeilo region. Please come and browse the site – it includes such things as a comprehensive reference list for the geology of the area, essays on various subjects (which might be of informal interest your students), and the early stages of an image gallery. There is also a forum for anyone interest, and for any suggestions. In this world of Google, it would be great for us if you could link to our site – let us know, and once our links page is up (shouldn’t be long now!) we’ll reciprocate. We look forward to our visit counter going through the roof! ;-) Joe Botting (joe@asoldasthehills.org) Lucy Muir Roy Barlow (roy@asoldasthehills.org) Lucy Muir Curator, Dennis Curry Collection Department of Palaeontology The Natural History Museum Cromwell Road London SW7 5BD Tel. (44) (0)20 7942 5383 Fax (44) (0)20 7942 5546
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