New PaleoNet Forum Articles

From
Date
I've just put up two new PaleoNet Forum articles:

The Inevitability of Publishing Electronically About Palaeontology - M. C.
Boulter

Interactive Manipulation of Enigmatic Palaeontological Data - D. Hewzulla
and Michael Boulter

These can be accessed from the PaleoNet Pages East...

(http://www.nhm.ac.uk/paleonet/)

or West...

(http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/Paleonet/)

Both articles are very timely, considering the explosion of interest in and
information about electronic publishing over the last year or so. In
particular I'd like to call your attention to the Hewzulla and Boulter
article. This contains a technical discussion of one strategy by which the
enormous quantities of data that will soon be available in on-line
databases might be managed using the tools of "Fuzzy Logic." In addition,
it provides a link to demonstration of the techniques discussed in the
article that provides users with access to segments of data residing within
the Plant Fossil Record database and Mike Benton's online version of The
Fossil Record 2 database, along with the ability to manipulate, view,
download, and model plots based on these data in the form of taxic richness
curves. This demonstration, which is the first of its type in the field of
paleontology, makes plain the enormous potential of internet-based
paleontological publications to go beyond the mere reporting of the static
results of a palaeontological investigation and provide our community with
dynamic tools whereby can immediately participate in the analysis of a
particular dataset. Unfortunately, Dilshat and Mike's demonstration relies
on access to browser capabilities (e.g., Java) that are only available in
the latest generation of WWW browsers and personal computer operating
systems. If your computer handle one of the Java-capable browsers you might
consider installing one of them, if only to view the demonstration. If not,
it would still be worth it to find a computer that has such a browser
installed in order to check the demonstration out. Electronic publishing is
just getting started in paleontology, and this demonstration may well give
all of us insight into the shape of things to come.

Any technical questions on the demonstrations should be directed to the
authors of the articles. However, any comments or views as to how our
science might benefit, encourage and/or organize the development of such
tools should be posted to PaleoNet.


Norm MacLeod




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Norman MacLeod
Micropalaeontological Research
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: 0171-938-9006
Dept. FAX:  0171-938-9277
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