RE: Future of palaeontology

From
Date
>Bill Shear wrote:
>
>> In our discussion of this subject we should recall Art Boucout's
>> oft-reiterated suggestion that the right place for paleontologists is in
>> biology, not geology, departments.  I strongly agree with this [...]

> Una Smith wrote:

>So do I, for the same reasons.  For nearly a generation, paleontology
>was an important tool used by stratigraphic geologists.  Now, that tool
>has been largely replaced by others, and stratigraphy also appears to
>be in decline (at least on the better-known continents).  This trend
>seems particularly clear in the publication record of paleopalynology.
>The history of paleontology at Yale reflects this:  the concentration
>of paleontology faculty has shifted over time from biology to geology
>and now appears to be heading back to biology again.
>

The question "Which department should paleontology be in?" seems to me
largely an administrative one.  Paleontology is very much an integrative
science (pardon the buzz word).  I think that the department in which a
paleontologist calls home is very much determined by what type of work the
person does.  Many paleontologists integrate basin analysis (sedimentology,
sequence stratigraphy, etc.) into their work, which is hardly in the realm
of biology.  On the other hand, many paleontologists working on
systematics, phylogenetics, functional morphology, etc. are laboring on
more biological issues.  Most of us traverse this "boundary" in our
research without thinking of it as a boundary at all.  This is not
different from our colleagues in geochemistry (they are chemists too,
right?) or geophysics, etc.  Fossils are the evidence of past life, so they
are "biological", but most are/were also sedimentary particles, so they are
"geological".  Debating whether the essence of paleontology is geological
or biological has no true resolution that I can see.  I don't see this as a
hindrance, rather it is an opportunity for paleontologists fill the niche
that is most open to them at the time.

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Stephen A. Leslie
Department of Earth Science
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
2801 South University
Little Rock, Arkansas  72204-1099

Phone: (501) 569-8061
FAX: (501) 569-3271
E-mail: saleslie@ualr.edu

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