Re: paleonet New website on the Ordovician of Wales

[Ron West <rrwest@xxxxxxx>]

Dear Lucy,

I have just had a look at your website noted below and was well 
impressed with what I was able to see and read although my own 
interests are in the Carboniferous and Permian.  I am writing to tell 
you that I like what you are doing and to point out a sight flaw, 
namely that I was unable to open the Notebook with Joe's drawings.  The 
photos came up quite nicely, but no luck with the drawings.

Thanks for a useful and, I'm sure, what will be an educational website.

Cheers - Ron
Ronald R. West, Ph.D.
Professor of Palaeobiology
Department of Geology
Thompson Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, Kansas 66506-3201
On Feb 8, 2006, at 9:52 AM, Lucy Muir wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
**************************