theme for an open taph session

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*** Resending note of 11/24/95 15:34

From: Susan Kidwell
Cc: Kay Behrensmeyer <MNHPB008@SIVM.SI.EDU>

 The organizers of the 1996 North American Paleontological Convention (to
be held in Washington, DC, June 9 - 12) have circulated a wonderful lineup
of symposia, but none focuses explicitly on taphonomy.  Somehow our
community has slipped up!  It is too late to do anything formal, but we
could still approximate the intellectual benefits of a symposium if a
particular theme were identified for an open session of entirely
volunteered abstracts.

To launch this, we propose a grass-roots theme session titled "How good is
the fossil record? Taphonomic insights on data quality", where speakers
would make a specific effort to address the quality of paleontologic data.
Such a session could include perspectives from both marine and nonmarine
settings, any taxonomic group, any geologic age including the Recent, and
any scientific method including experiments and simulations.  To unify the
session, we recommend that everyone focus part of their presentation on the
practical consequences or benefits of their research for other kinds of
paleontological investigation.

 Some of you may already have planned to submit an abstract along these
lines, and others may see how your work could easily be tailored to fit.
For those still deciding, we urge you to take this as an incentive to pull
things together in time for the January 19 abstract deadline.  We see the
theme as including issues of:  temporal resolution; spatial resolution
(habitat to province scale); selective preservation of species, age
classes, body types, body parts, etc.;  how data reliability varies among
environments and geologic ages; stratigraphic completeness and related
biases; etc.

 Obviously, this proposed theme is not meant to discourage anyone from
submitting abstracts to NAPC stressing other aspects of the field.  But
much taphonomic work has direct application to "quality" issues for
paleontologic data, and it seems an opportune time and place to highlight
this important role.  Moreover, we though this topic would be likely to
draw the broadest possible audience to a taphonomy session, thus promoting
new collaborations and discoveries.

 Practicalities:  Do NOT send abstracts to either of us, send them to the
NAPC organizers -- these are all volunteered abstracts, and neither of us
will have anything to do with their acceptance, etc.  We are launching this
informal theme session with the knowledge and blessing of the NAPC
organizers, however, so if you do write an abstract with this informal
theme session in mind, you should mention it on the form.

If you have not already received a circular about NAPC-96, information and
abstract forms are available from <napc.six@simnh.si.edu>.  The deadline
for abstracts is January 19, 1996.

Hope to see you in DC in June 1996, regardless of topic.  Snappier titles
most welcome...