TRILOBITE PAPERS 15
TRILOBITE PAPERS 15
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CONTENT *Editorial*Treatise News *Five Thousand Trilobites *A Century ago: 1903 *Oklahoma Symposium 2004 *Point/Counterpoint Hughes and Brandt *Fourth Trilobite Conference *New Cambrian Stage and Series *Korea 2004 *Prof. Ivo Chlupac (1931-2002) *Ivo Chlupac: Memories *Yale trilobites *109 year old reprint *Argentine Ordovician fossils *Vladimir Savitsky (1928-1981) *The Walcott Album *Trilobite People *Trilobite Gallery *Trilobite shades *Research Reports
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COMPLETE TRILOBITE PAPERS 15
Now Available on CD-ROM
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EDITORIAL
The formal photo above of twenty-one Cambrian trilobite paleontologists and biostratigraphers was taken at a 1970 meeting in the Siberian industrial city of Novokuznetsk. Front and centre is Spitzharsky, the Chairman of the Cambrian Commission of the U.S.S.R. He is flanked by the grandes dames of Siberian Cambrian trilobites -- Suvorova, Chernysheva and Poletaeva. The next generation of trilobite workers -- predominantly women – are arrayed in the second and third rows. This group photograph conveys the strength of Soviet research effort which, in its hey-day in the ‘70s, could deploy dozens of specialists to document the paleontology, paleoecology and biostratigraphy of the vast Cambrian regions of the Russian Arctic, Siberian Platform, Kazakhstan and points beyond. The team of Cambrian trilobite workers was even larger than shown here. Several did not attend the Novokuznetsk meeting – Lada Repina, Lydia Egorova and Nikolai Ivshin come to mind. [ Observant and long-time readers of the Trilobite Papers will recognize that the same photograph appeared in TP-3 which was distributed just prior to the official end of the Soviet Union in December, 1991 ]A third of a century later, where are these paleontologists now? Some, like Vladimir Savitsky and Olga Poletaeva (and Repina and Ivshin), are dead. The lack of resources has forced many to leave the profession -- Nadezhda Lazarenko and Zoya Petrunina are two, but there are undoubtedly many more. The few remaining are finding that field work, research and publishing has become immensely difficult – sometimes impossible -- in the former Soviet Union. Moreover, serious problems exist with the maintenance of the massive research and type collections of Siberian trilobites in Novosibirsk, Novokuznetsk and Almaty.
From the Research Reports sent in this year to the Trilobite Papers, we can get passing glimpses of what it is like to be a paleontologist in Russia or Kazakhstan these days. Lidiya Ogienko (2nd row, far left) of Irkutsk, Russia and Kalisa Lisogor (2nd row, third from right) of Almaty, Kazakhstan speak with one voice: "We don’t know how long we can continue our trilobite studies because the financial support of the Ministry of Natural Resouces has stopped." Gappar Ergaliev (3rd row, 2nd from left) of Almaty points out the impossibility of doing paleontological research in Kazakhstan because the libraries do not carry journals more recent than the mid-1990s. Tatyana Pegel of SNIIGGIMS in Novosibirsk notes drily that the Department of Stratigraphy and Paleontology ceased to exist last year because of financial problems. Nevertheless, she is pressing ahead with several research projects on Siberian trilobites.
Russia and Kazakhstan are, of course, not alone in experiencing a downturn in trilobite paleontology. It is also happening elsewhere. Euan Clarkson notes ruefully that he is not being replaced by another paleontologist when he retires. This means that nearly 40 years of paleontology, much of this on trilobites, comes to an end at the University of Edinburgh. Similarly, in Canada, vacancies at three universities in the 1990s were not filled by younger trilobite paleontologists (or for that matter, by paleontologists!) and, as a result, Canadian trilobite research, which was actively pursued at four universities, is now done only at a single university (see DIRT Occ.Pap. 1).
Doom and gloom! Well, certainly not everywhere. Our field receives a boost every time a keen paleontology graduate student makes the decision to work on trilobites instead of, say, dinoflagellates. The enthusiasm, energy and fresh insight of Niklas Axheimer, Stacy Gibb, Kevin Brett, S.-B. Lee, I.S. Kang, E.Y. Kim, John Hampton, Brenda Hanke, Thomas Hansen, Ashmita Lahiri, Andy Simpson, Noel Heim, Bryan Sell, Sandy Dengler, Jennifer Eoff, Lisa Amati, Shawn Thomas and others I have missed will remake trilobite paleontology and take it deep into the 21st century.
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FIVE THOUSAND TRILOBITES ALL IN A ROW
Peter Jell and Jon Adrain, 2003. Available generic names for trilobites. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, vol. 48, p. 331-553.ROLF LUDVIGSEN
According to the authors of the first Trilobite Treatise, the global generic diversity of trilobites comprised about 1200 in 1959 (actually 1956, which was the deadline for manuscripts). How many more genera have been added to the list since then? In 1983, and in anticipation of the needs of the authors of the upcoming Treatise revision, Harry Whittington and Simon Kelly compiled a list of about 2500 trilobite genera, all proposed after the1959 Treatise. This list was distributed to Treatise authors, but it was never published. A sobering implication of the Whittington and Kelly numbers is that, for the 27 year period from 1956 to 1983, a new genus of trilobites was being being pumped out every four days. Thus, by 1983, the global generic diversity of trilobites stood at 3700 (plus or minus several hundreds).In a Systematic Listing, Jell and Adrain list all the higher taxa and the genera they would assign to them. They refer to these taxa as families – although other systematists would call them superfamilies or even suborders. Regardless of hierarchical level, this list is invaluable because it is inclusive. It is, however, more than a little daunting to realize that, in Jell and Adrain’s compendium, the family Asaphidae includes 154 genera, and the family Proetidae no fewer than 331 genera. This publication is essential, not only to all Treatise authors, but to any taxonomist of trilobites who has ambition to venture into the tricky field of genus making Peter and Jon are now mailing this memoir to all trilobite workers that they have addresses for. If any reader of the Trilobite Papers would like a copy, Peter Jell invites them to e-mail him their postal address at peter.jell@qm.qld.gov.au
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For nearly a dozen years, the Czech paleontologist and artist Radko Saric has contributed lithographs and drawings on trilobite themes to the Trilobite Papers. This devilish collection of trilobites is the latest.
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DIRT Occasional Paper One on trilobite paleontology in Canada was distributed as a supplement to the Trilobite Papers 15.
TRILOBITES AND TRILOBITOLOGY IN CANADA
Now Available on CD-ROM
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Trilobites and Trilobitology in Canada
Rolf Ludvigsen, Denman Institute for Research on Trilobites, 3390 Denman Road, Denman Island, British Columbia, Canada V0R 1T0
ABSTRACT
Trilobites were picked up, literally in passing, by different travellers through the Canadian wilderness, perhaps as early as a thousand years ago. Canadian trilobites were first illustrated by J.J. Bigsby in the 1820s. With the 1856 appointment of Elkanah Billings as paleontologist to the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), these fossils began to be used to solve geologic problems and became an essential aid for the bedrock mapping that was the principal focus of the GSC. George Frederic Matthew, truly a professional amateur, worked on Cambrian trilobites of Maritime Canada from his home in Saint John, New Brunswick while paleontologists from the United States sought and found productive research areas in western Canada (C.D. Walcott of the Smithsonian) and eastern Canada (Charles Schuchert and his Yale graduate students). The ‘30s and ‘40s brought new and unexpected players to the Canadian trilobite scene – Teiichi Kobayashi from the Imperial University of Tokyo and Franco Rasetti, the Italian nuclear physicist cum paleontologist from Laval University. In the‘50s and ‘60s no trilobite paleontologist was on the staff of any Canadian university, but paleontologists from U.S. and British universities continued to work on Canadian trilobites – notably Harry Whittington on faunas from western Newfoundland and from the Burgess Shale. GSC paleontologists dealt expeditiously with Cambrian and Ordovician trilobites during the active period of reconnaissance mapping in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Starting in the ‘80s the trilobite focus shifted to the universities as the GSC virtually abandoned Paleozoic paleontology. At about this time, four trilobite paleontologists began research and graduate teaching at universities of Montréal, Alberta, Toronto and Brock. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, clearly the apogee of Canadian trilobitology, active research resulted in the completion of a dozen master’s theses and five doctoral theses on Canadian trilobites at Canadian universities plus a major flurry of papers and monographs. Budget shortfalls and changing priorities in the 1990s translated into lack of academic positions for younger Canadian trilobite paleontologists who either abandoned paleontology entirely or took positions at American universities. Now, at the start of a new millennium, only a single Canadian university involves graduate students in trilobite research.
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