Paleonet: Info about vendobiont Armillifera parva

Thu Dec 20 11:10:13 UTC 2007

Dear all

I'm searching information and a graphic reconstruction about the vendobiont Armillifera parva from the precambrian White Sea lagerstätten fauna.
( it resemble like this: http://www.keyobs.be/fr/ebonino/html/white_sea3.html#Armillifera%20parva ).

The only reference where the specimen is described is available in this paper:

Fendonkin (1980) - New Precambrian Coelenterata in the north of the Russian Platform. Paleontologicheskii Zhurnal v.(2) pp 7-15

Unfortunately this journal it is not available in our local library.
There is someone that posses the digital version of this paper?

Taking advantage of this email I send at all the paleo-community my Best wishes of Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Enrico

*********************
Enrico Bonino Dr.
GIS Specialist - Geologist
KEYOBS s.a. 
SPATIOPOLE
4, rue des Chasseurs Ardennais
4031 Angleur - LIEGE (Belgium)
tel. +32 04 3846315
fax +32 04 3846215
skype: enrico_bonino
http://www.keyobs.com/fr/ebonino
*********************

----- Messaggio originale -----
Da: Lukas Hottinger <lukas.hottinger at unibas.ch>
A: paleonet at nhm.ac.uk
Inviato: Lunedì 26 novembre 2007, 18:13:53
Oggetto: Paleonet: Treatise Invertebrate Paleontology

Open letter to Paul Selden about the Treatise of Invertebrate 
Paleontology

Dear colleage,
I have taught paleontology from vertebrates to unicellulars as a 
one-man-job at the University of Basel from 1968 to 1998. The Treatise 
of Invertebrate Paleontology was absolutely fundamental for this task, 
in particular the general introductory chapters, but also the 
systematic parts were useful to get an idea about the richness of taxa 
with their different morphologies in the different groups. I am 
immensely grateful to the authors and the organizing staff of the 
Treatise to have had during all those years a reliable source of basic 
information on which to base my invertebrate courses with a half-life 
of about five years. Of course I have used also Pivetau's French
 Traité 
de Paléontologie, in particular for vertebrates, and on occasion 
Orlov's Treatise in Russian but both remarquable works have not been 
updated since their first appearance. A number of volumes of the French

Traité de Zoologie edited by Grassé contains most useful information
 on 
the biology of vertebrates and invertebrates that are indispensable for

explaining functional aspects of the morphology of fossils. This latter

aspect is insufficiently taken into account in the Treatise. However, 
the Treatise has produced the best overview available on fossil 
invertebrates and therefore has  provided the American leadership, 
sofar, for this section of paleontology.

In research, the Treatise plays another role that is not so positive. 
Here, the updating is of prime importance to keep up with the 
devolpment of the general biology of the groups concerned and in 
particular of the taxonomic system from the generic to all higher 
levels. In my personal field of research, the benthic foraminifera, the

number of valid genera has doubled within one generation, when 
comparing the Treatise  C/2 Protista of 1964 with its successor 1987 by

the same authors Loeblich & Tappan. In the late seventies I visited 
Curt Teichert in Lawrence to discuss an update of the 1964 volume but 
to my regret, this update appeared as separate publication without an 
updated general introductory part corresponding to Treatise standarts. 
However, in my research work the updated taxonomic volumes of Loeblich 
and Tappan 1987 are used daily. This may illustrate the necessity to 
have an instrument at hand that provides rapid and reliable information

on the taxonomy of the groups we work with, even in a field where there

is a (however uncritical) Catalogue of genera and species available.

Today, I do not see anyone in the world to carry through an endeavor of

the kind that Loeblich and Tappan had realized in 1987. They had told 
me their progress in work to be one genus per day and that means over 
2000 work days, i.e. about 7 years to produce the update. Take another 
three years to accomplish editing and printing a memoir of this size, 
it would mean that we have to foresee at least a decade for an update 
of a Treatise volume. This is definitly too slow for research and 
industrial needs in a time where taxonomic specialists are dying out 
and the demands for identification of organisms increase drastically in

environmental sciences and in organismic biology.

In my view, this has the following consequences:
1. Separate an autoritative general part on a group of fossils from the

corresponding taxonomic part.
2. The general part should explain the morphology of the fossilized 
hard parts of the organisms involved, their comparative anatomy 
including the concepts of the morphological terminology, a glossary of 
the terms with critical comments,  functional aspects of the morphology

of the hard parts based on the biology of living representatives of the

group or analogue living organisms and apects of their ecology, 
biogeography and phylogeny that include general observations on the 
species level. Let us not forget that ecology operates with populations

and communities, categories of life on the species level.
3. The taxonomic part, from the generic to all higher taxonomic levels,

should include at the generic level remarks on the species and 
references to autoritative monographs. Genera may be monospecific or 
contain a high number of species and are thus not equivalent. This is 
important to remember when Treatise data on the taxonomic system are 
counted in quantitative analyses.
4. In many Treatise volumes, the diagnoses of the genera are either 
insufficiently discernible or incomprehensisble. In my personal 
experience, this was the case in particular in the Ammonite volume of 
Arkell but also in the volumes on Forams by Loeblich and Tappan. The 
diagnoses of genera and subfamilies or higher units should not 
contradict each other and reflect clearly the hierarchy within the 
group concerned. The diagnoses demand a consistant use of morphological

terms.
5. On the illustrations of the genera, the diagnostic elements of the 
morphology should be pointed out and labeled. This is imperative on 
photographic illustrations.

The question arizes whether the publication of future Treatise elements

in print on paper would be adequate in the present situation or in 
future. The continuation of the long tradition editing the blue volumes

would support their autoriative weight and might enhance the chances of

continued funding. A separation of general and taxonomic parts would 
permit to accelerate an independant updating of the earlier volumes 
without waiting for an endless struggel for a revised taxonomy. Keeping

in mind however the needs of a taxonomically correct paleontology based

on biological understanding applied to stratigraphy for calibrating 
geochemical curves, for paleoecology and paleobiogeography, and 
considering the need of traditional, basic dating of so many 
sedimentary sequences in the developing countries, as well as their 
educational needs, I  plead for a change to electronic means for 
disseminating more rapidly significant new paleontological information.

Should the future, let's say the next decade, reveal the impossibility 
to store the electronic information for several centuries (as do indeed

widely distributed books), we can always print out this information on 
paper before it would be lost.
The advantages of electronic publication are among others the 
following: Low costs and speedy release of the publication, the 
possibility for corrections and partial updates, the use of colours, 
the possibility to enlarge the illustrations on the screen to see more 
details, the use of movable elements in the illustration or hyperlinks 
to references, alphabetic lists and illustrations. In this respect see 
also Jere Lipps' editorial in Paleontologia Electronica 2007-1.
Today, the prestige of the electronic publication is still low but will

rise when we use more often the new possibilities for significant 
publications of first class quality. In addition a common effort of our

scientific community will be necessary to exert a strong pressure on 
funding organisms and evaluation corporations to revise their 
evaluation practice by taking into account, beyond the citation index, 
the number of years during which a scientific product is cited and, 
beyond the established scientific journals, all other means of 
scientific communication, in particular monographs and electronic 
publications.
Keeping in mind the current difficulties in funding our scientific 
activities and the vanishing prestige of taxonomic work that reduces 
drastically the number of professionals available for tasks such as the

Treatise, a division of labor seems imperative. Software as the one 
used for Wikipedia, but under conditions of editorial and peer review, 
would in my view facilitate the acquisition of contributions to a new 
electronic form of an autoritative Treatise that may keep up with 
progress in modern times in a more adequate way.

Kind regards,  Lukas Hottinger (Basel)

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