Paleonet: Deadline for submitting GSA 2009 sessions-- January 6th!

[Rowan Lockwood]

Hi Peter and colleagues,

Happy New Year! 

I agree with Peter's suggestion that a session reconciling or integrating biostratigraphy and paleobiology would be timely and fascinating. The Paleontological Society would definitely be interested in sponsoring it....If anyone is intrigued by the prospect of convening such a session, please feel free to contact me off-list (rxlock at wm.edu). 

Thanks!

Rowan Lockwood
Associate Professor
Department of Geology
The College of William and Mary
PO Box 8795
Williamsburg, VA 23187
rxlock at wm.edu; 757-221-2878


---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:56:53 -0800 (PST)
>From: argo at u.washington.edu  
>Subject: Re: Paleonet: Deadline for submitting GSA 2009 sessions-- January 6th!  
>To: rxlock at wm.edu, PaleoNet <paleonet at nhm.ac.uk>
>
>Hi Rowan and colleagues - 
>Pardon the mass mailing.
>
>Would anyone out there be willing to contribute to something along the lines of reconciling biostratigraphy and paleobiology?  In all of our fields the dominant paradigm of the last two centuries, using fossils to break up time, created species concepts so narrowly drawn that they worked to break up rock units (sometimes), but surely are not grounded in any biological reality.  In my own group, ammonoids and nautiloids, it is clear that there are far too many taxa oversplit at the species level, split so fine that only one or two specialists can  recognize them.  Because ammonoids hatched with a tiny calcified gas bag, and surely floated with currents, it can be predicted that there should be relatively few species, that speciation was difficult. Because nautiloids hatched large and lived benthically, it can be predicted that since any water depth greater than implosion depth would functionally 
>segregate populations, that there should be many species.  Modern Biology seems to bear both predictions out.  Jim Bonacum of Illinois has now shown that what we call "Nautilus pompilius" may be 10-25 separate, sibling species.   Each separated island group has its own.  And the closest analogue to ammonoid reproduction, the coleoid Spirula, has but one species world-wide.  Using morphometrics on shell characters, I can show that the index ammonite Baculites is  oversplit by an order of magnitude -
>
>I do not know what to call such a session - Putting Biology into Biostratigraphy? or something?  But I know it is needed.
>
>Professor Peter D Ward
>Dept of Biology
>The University of Washington
>Seattle, 98195
>206-543-2962  ( Office )
>
>
>