Predictions for the future!?!

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The university academic year is beginning again in N. America (groan!)
though here in the U.K. we still have another month of "summer" to go
(yeah!). Since there are undoubtedly a lot of new graduate students
wandering about asking themselves "What should I do for my thesis," as well
as a fair number of graduate advisors wondering "What should I have John
Smith & Jane Doe do for their theses," it might be fun to speculate on what
paleontology's "next big thing" might be. While lots of research programs
always go on side-by-side in our science major themes do take hold from
time to time. The 70's are remembered by many as the decade of punctuated
equilibrium while the 80's will be remembered as the decade of mass
extinctions (no pun intended). So far, the 90's seem unformed to me. If
anything, the early 90's saw a continued popular interest in mass
extinctions. My hunch is that the focus is shifting, though I'm not at all
sure where it will end up. There seems to be lots of general interest in
paleoecology right now, but, so far as I can tell, no well-defined and
really new paleoecological research program has emerged. Nevertheless, my
(un)educated guess right now is that paleoecology (in some form) will be
the new focus of attention. Personally, I'd like to see more studies of
morphology and ecology combined within an explicitly phylogenetic context
as a way of really understanding biotic response to long-term environmental
change, but I have little hope that this will emerge as a dominant theme
for the multitudes.  Anybody else care to gaze into their crystal ball and
offer any predictions?


Norm MacLeod



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Norman MacLeod
Senior Scientific Officer
N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk (Internet)
N.MacLeod@uk.ac.nhm (Janet)

Address: Dept. of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum,
         Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD

Office Phone: 071-938-9006
Dept. FAX:  071-938-9277
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