Role of Systematics

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Having been for most of my life a radiolarian systematist and
biostratigrapher, I suppose that it is inevitable that I regard systematics
as the most fundamental aspect of paleontology, ranking right up there with
the concept of geological time.

It seems to me that in the teaching of paleontology, it is not particularly
useful for students to learn to identify fossils to any level lower than,
say, classes, but it is important for them to understand how species are
delimited, and how related species are grouped into genera and higher taxa.
They need also to know the principles involved in applying formal names to
species and to genera. And it should be made clear to them that two or more
taxonomists can quite justifiably have different systems of names for the
same group of organisms or fossils - the different approaches of splitters
and lumpers provide an easily comprehensible example. This kind of basic
foundation will help them to understand how paleontologists work, and will
give them some basis for understanding paleontological data.

Having said that, which is rather like an endorsement of motherhood, I'd
like to elaborate on the part of Mike Melchin's message that says "... the
identification of taxa is the single most important part of paleontological
data acquisition. Misidentifications and identifications of poorly defined
taxa are bad data in the same way as an incorrect radiometric date or
geochemical analysis".

I have the illuminating experience of serving on an Information Handling
Panel, one of the responsibilities of which is to advise on the capture of
paleontological data by the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP). In general, every
two months ODP's drilling ship sails on a new leg of research drilling, with
a shipboard party which includes several paleontologists to record and
interpret the planktonic microfossil assemblages in the drilled cores. ODP
and its predecessor (the Deep Sea Drilling Project) have so far accomplished
about 160 such two-month legs, each with a different set of paleontologists,
ranging from widely experienced veterans to novices. Inevitably, the
paleontological data recorded are of very variable quality, and often cannot
be interpreted precisely.

The data-assembling software on the ship is now being fundamentally
revamped, providing an opportunity to make a substantial improvement in the
quality of the paleontological data being collected. It is unrealistic, and
not even desirable, to require that all ODP shipboard paleontologists apply
a single, specified concept to each species they record. But each
paleontologist will be strongly urged, and assisted, to specify which of the
available published concepts he/she is applying to each species he/she
records.  Thus, shipboard paleontologist X might apply to species Bc the
concept published by author G in year H, whereas shipboard paleontologist Y,
on a subsequent cruise-leg, might use the same species name Bc in the sense
defined by author M in year N.  This will avoid a major source of the
uncertainty that pervades many of the records of species in previous
DSDP/ODP literature, where it is not clear which of several available
concepts is being applied to a taxon.

Perhaps this new requirement of ODP paleontologists will be considered "no
big deal" to paleontologists working in other fossil groups, where workers
may be more thorough and conscientious than many of those who work in
planktonic micropaleontology.  Or, would data on other fossil groups be
similarly improved by routine specification of the taxon concepts being
applied, rather than simply the bare species names?

  
W. Riedel
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
UCSD
La Jolla, CA 92093-0220

wriedel@ucsd.edu
phone (619) 534-4386
fax   (619) 534-0784