RE: Future of palaeontology

[bivalve@xxxxxxxxxxxx (David Campbell)]

[from a message that was blank as I received it but copied in someone
else's reply]
>>  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).
        Although it's in decline, there's a lot of stratigraphy still to be
done.  A lot of work remains to be done on the stratigraphy of the coastal
plain in the southeastern U.S!  Most published references have Pliocene
beds out of stratigraphic order; both macrofossils and microfossils can be
used to correct this, while sequence stratigraphy is partly based upon some
of the muddled published versions and is thus not too useful.

David Campbell

"Old Seashells"
Department of Geology
CB 3315 Mitchell Hall
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill NC 27599-3315
919-962-0685
FAX 919-966-4519

"He had discovered an unknown bivalve, forming a new genus"-E. A. Poe, The
Gold Bug