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THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TRILOBITES AND THEIR RELATIVES (OXFORD, APRIL 2001) AND A PHYLOGENY OF A PALEONTOLOGICAL MEETING

Exactly two years later, in July 1975, the proceedings of that NATO Advanced Study Institute were published in a weighty 467-page tome entitled Evolution and morphology of the Trilobita, Trilobitoidea and Merostomata (Martinsson, 1975). The summer of 1975 also happened to be a particularly eventful one for me. It marked the very first season of the Royal Ontario Museum's field activities in Yoho National Park, the start of my second year of employment at the ROM, and the beginning of my quarter-century- long fascination with trilobites and Burgess Shale arthropods. After three months with the ROM crew on Fossil Ridge and the Mount Stephen trilobite beds, scouring talus for salvageable specimens, I returned to the museum to begin the task of sorting and identifying the 1975 collections and making up sets of fossils for distribution across Canada. One of my prime references in these efforts was the brand new Oslo proceedings volume, which contained important papers on Burgess Shale trilobites (Olenoides and Kootenia) by Harry Whittington, and on the enigmatic arthropod Burgessia by Chris Hughes. [Coincidentally, a second major reference was also published that same year. Alberto Simonetta's and Laura Delle Cave's (1975) massive volume, The Cambrian non-Trilobite Arthropods from the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. A study of their comparative morphology, taxonomy, and evolutionary significance, contained 61 plates of drawings and photographs of fossils, as well as brief descriptions of old and new Burgess Shale taxa.]

Over the next twenty or so years, trilobite workers around the world pursued their elusive fossils in the field and laboured in labs and libraries to decipher the often cryptic paleobiological, phylogenetic, and biostratigraphic signals locked in the Paleozoic rock record. They met from time to time in small groups in special sessions at larger meetings and conferences, but never had the opportunity to gather, en masse, as they had in Olso in the summer of '73. Then, in 1989, Rolf Ludvigsen revived the sadly defunct Trilobite News in the form of The Trilobite Papers, and along with this welcome reopening of the lines of communication came a valiant attempt to convene an International Trilobite Conference in Uzbekistan in 1993 (with Evgeny Yolkin as Chair and Rolf Ludvigsen as Co-Chair). Unfortunately, INTRILCO-93 was doomed by unrest and uncertainty following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and no one seemed anxious to immediately step forward and take on the task of organizing a replacement meeting. 

The same two decades following the Oslo meeting saw an incredible resurgence of interest in the fossils of the Burgess Shale, spurred on primarily by a raft of elegant research papers by Harry Whittington, his colleagues (including David Bruton) and student protégés, and by tantalizing new discoveries by Des Collins and his ROM crews on Fossil Ridge and Mount Stephen. Public interest peaked with the enormous popular appeal of Stephen Jay Gould's trio of columns in Natural History that lead, eventually, to his 1989 best-selling book Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. Through the 1980s and early '90s, the focus of my own work at the ROM was shifting gradually away from the Burgess Shale and, under the initial influence of Rolf Ludvigsen followed by the gentle and exceptionally generous tutelage of Ron Tripp, I found myself ever more deeply engrossed in the intricacies of trilobite paleobiology.

At a Canadian Paleontology Conference held in Drumheller in September 1995, a group of Canadian trilobite workers got together and cooked up the bold proposal that the Second International Trilobite Conference should be a Canadian affair and for only two years hence! Steve Westrop, then at Brock University in St. Catharines, was convinced to accept responsibility for organizing the meeting. Fortunately he also managed to coerce Jon Adrain (then of the Natural History Museum in London) into co-organizing the meeting. Thus it came to pass that in August of 1997, 24 years after the Oslo conference, trilobites and their relatives once again became the focus of international attention as 85 registrants from around the world congregated in St. Catharines. [It was a good year, trilobite-wise, as 1997 also marked the publication of the first revised trilobite volume of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology under the guidance of Harry Whittington.] The relative proximity of Toronto and St. Catharines meant that I was able to be involved in some of the organizational efforts for TRILO 97, to participate in the technical sessions, and to mingle meekly among the handful of attendees, including David Bruton, who had also been present in Oslo those many years ago! Following on in the tradition of the '73 meeting and the resultant proceedings volume (Martinsson, 1975), many of the papers presented at TRILO 97 were published two years later in a dedicated Trilobite Paleobiology volume of the Journal of Paleontology (Adrain and Westrop, 1999).

One significant event set the St. Catharines conference apart from its distant progenitor in Oslo: the announcement by an ambitious delegation from the UK that they would gladly host the 3rd International Conference - not almost a quarter of a century down the road, but in a scant four years time!

And so, in early April of this year, 100 specialists and students with a mutual interest in a long extinct group of fossil arthropods gathered in Oxford, England to share knowledge, ideas, and recent research advances at the Third International Conference on Trilobite and their Relatives. After 25 years at the ROM I was still plugging away on the fringes of trilobite research, and couldn't resist making the pilgrimage to the historic university town. Derek Siveter (University of Oxford) and his crack Organizing Committee put on a splendid meeting in august and tradition-steeped surroundings of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and St. John's College. The rainier than normal English Spring was a minor inconvenience compared to the devastating outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that shut down much of the countryside and forced the last-minute cancellation of pre- and post-conference field trips to Scotland and Wales. The three-day program of talks and poster presentations addressed a broad range of topics including trilobite visual systems, aspects of trilobite behaviour, growth and moulting, structure and function, evolutionary patterns (from intraspecific variation to higher trilobite phylogeny), interpretation of paleobiogeographic distributions, historical aspects of trilobite taxonomy, trilobite palaeoecology, biostratigraphy, and taphonomy. A half-day session was devoted to non-trilobite arthropods (the "relatives" of the conference title), and the nine scheduled talks covered a variety of organisms and approaches to arthropod classification. Of particular note were two presentations featuring Burgess Shale animals: Des Collins on three new onychophorans, and Diego Garcia-Bellido (co-authored with Des Collins) on Marrella. Des's paper was highlighted, as always, by superb photographs of the bizarre new lobopodans (relatives of Ayshaeia and of the living velvet worms), and by reconstructions of their disparate lifestyles. Diego provided the interim results of his re-study of Marrella, including new evidence for the possible presence of eyes, details of the internal anatomy, and aspects of its behaviour and ecology. Several presentations in other sessions also made reference to the trilobites and non-trilobite arthropods of the Burgess Shale. Plans are underway to publish selected conference contributions in a Palaeontological Association Special Publications volume.

Fortunately, the mid-meeting half-day excursion did not meet the same fate as the pre/post-conference field trips. Despite the cool, rainy conditions, two coach loads of participants enjoyed a journey to one of Britain's classic Silurian (Wenlock) fossil localities at Wren's Nest National Nature Reserve, and a splendid reception at the Dudley Museum and Art Gallery. An evening at the Black Country Museum included an unforgettable narrowboat cruise of the 18th century subterranean canal tunnel network through the spectacular Castle Hill limestone mines. 

The Oxford conference was notable not only for the uniformly high quality of the technical sessions and the convivial social events, but also for the truly international scope of participation - some 18 countries were represented among the participants.

The final day of technical sessions concluded, most fittingly, with a talk by Bob Owens (one of the conference organizers) entitled "The Last Trilobites." Following a sherry reception that afternoon, the closing conference dinner in St John's College Dining Hall brought meeting participants and guests together one last time in grand style. Assembled at high table were Derek Siveter and members of the Organizing Committee, accompanied by a stalwart contingent composed of a handful of conference delegates who had been present at the Oslo conference nearly 28 years before. This exclusive group (whose membership encompassed virtually all of the Organizing Committee) also included a beaming David Bruton, the ever-gracious Alberto Simonetta, and the indomitable Harry Whittington, recent recipient of the both the Lapworth Medal and the Geological Association of Canada Medal! Harry's presence at the conference highlighted the enormous influence he has had on the study of trilobites and their relatives for more than half a century. His former students Terry Fletcher, Richard Fortey, Derek Briggs, Ken McNamara, Fred Shaw and Paul Selden, themselves now pre-eminent paleontologists, also participated as presenters, session chairs and co-organizers of the conference, and occupied places of honour at the dinner.

The meal and accompanying wines were wonderful, the speeches entertaining and mercifully short, and the evening wrapped up with the requisite and well-deserved rounds of applause acknowledging the success of the conference and the hard work of the organizers.