Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part A Problem of effectiveness
- Part B Proposed solution
- 3 Suggested new Paleontologic Data-Handling Code (PDHC)
- 4 Records are primary
- 5 Nomenclature/language of records
- 6 The Paleotaxon
- 7 Replacing the Genus
- 8 The Record package
- Part C Applications for information-handling
- Part D Further considerations
- Appendices 1 and 2: Worked examples of GOR and PTR forms
- Glossary
- References
- Index
8 - The Record package
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Part A Problem of effectiveness
- Part B Proposed solution
- 3 Suggested new Paleontologic Data-Handling Code (PDHC)
- 4 Records are primary
- 5 Nomenclature/language of records
- 6 The Paleotaxon
- 7 Replacing the Genus
- 8 The Record package
- Part C Applications for information-handling
- Part D Further considerations
- Appendices 1 and 2: Worked examples of GOR and PTR forms
- Glossary
- References
- Index
Summary
Paleontology may be described historically in terms of three main phases, which may be distinguished as a succession, despite some overlap and despite a time-lag in some later-developed areas of the world.
(a) In the nineteenth century, universal exploration of the wonders of nature past.
(b) In the early and middle twentieth century, detailed exploration of the remarkable diversity and preservation of individual groups of organisms conducted by increasingly isolated experts within these groups.
(c) In the late twentieth century, exploitation by synthesis of accumulated information on fossils for greatly improved interpretation of succession and paleoenvironment, using automated data-handling potential for extension of scope beyond the unaided powers of the human brain.
Traditional paleontology of the first two phases was characterised by excitement over frontiers of knowledge and by its philosophy of the value of rapid discovery justifying various farfrom-perfect means and methods. One of these methods has comprised an accidentally blinkered approach to taxonomy through nomenclature rules which has had three unfortunate consequences: (i) A continuing widespread belief that a species of fossil specimens constitutes a natural entity the true characters of which have to be sought by observation and which, once found, do not really require further description; (ii) the paradoxical assumption that because the relative ages of rocks have originally been determined from their fossil content, and because the method is often still used on new rock samplings, no taxon can be actually characterised by its known range; and (iii) a policy of parsimony in erecting taxa (known as ‘lumping’ as opposed to the ‘iniquitous splitting’), so that humanbrain data-handling should not be overwhelmed.
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- Information
- Fossils as InformationNew Recording and Stratal Correlation Techniques, pp. 51 - 54Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989