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CELEBRATING
10 YEARS OF ISSUES!
You will notice some
changes with this issue. Increased printing/postage costs
and my increasing work load means that I have shed some
of the usual content such as full references - these can
be found on our WWW site. At this stage I cannot promise
to do than more than one issue per year but I will
endeavour to send important news to our site and all
major meetings are advertised there. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE
ACCESS TO THE INTERNET PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU NEED
REFERENCE LISTS ETC.
ICHTHYOLITH
ISSUESAND IGCP 406 ON
THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Our
World Wide Web page:
http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/wilson.hp/Palaeozoic.html
1997
finished in a flurry of activity, report writing and
meetings: Alain Blieck and I continue to write and edit
manuscripts for the final report of IGCP 328: Palaeozoic
Microvertebrates which will be forwarded soon to Dr Peter
Konigshof, the editor of Courier Forschungsinstitut
Senckenberg(see list
below for final contents). Those contributors who have
not finalised their manuscripts please send remaining
material to Alain Blieck or myself NOW. The second part
of the Gross Symposium was published midyear as
Modern
Geologyvol. 21, nos.
1/2 icluded 14more
papers aand at least four are still in press. Other
volumes published include the 1994, Moscow joint IGCP
328: SDS Symposium "Devonian Eustatic Changes of the
World Ocean Level" as another volume ofCourier
Forschungsinstitut
Senckenberg(see 1997
list).
IGCP 406: Circum
Arctic
Palaeozoic
Vertebrates
successes
included
the
Buckow
and
St Petersburg meetings
(see reports below) and
two Special Publications
(Nos 2 & 3) of Ichthyolith Issues resulted
cotaining the Extended
Abstracts from both gatherings - contact Dr Mark V.H.
Wilson for copies. The 1997 list of microvertebrate and
relevant papers is published in this
Ichthyolith
Issues. Consult the
WWW site for information regarding the 1998 meetings of
IGCP 406. The main news from 406 is the appointment of a
third co-leader Dr Peep Mannik of Tallinn who will share
the burden with Mark Wilson and Tiiu Märss.
IGCP 421 met for the
first time in 1998 with meetings in Montpellier and
Wollongong, Australia. Abstracts for the latter are
published as a Geological Society of Australia
Publication no. 48. Several papers and posters were
relevant to Palaeozoic fish work in Northern Gondwana and
especially Australasia (see 1997 list and individual
news).
All of us have stories of
cut-backs and retrenchments over the past couple of years
and it is clear that many governments are considering
discontinuing funding for basic science (under what I
think is a false premise that basic scientific research
bears no relationship to technology and progress). Jere
H. Lipps (Past President Pal. Soc) in his last letter as
President of the Paleontological Society
(Priscum7, no. 2,
1997) discussed the perceived current problems facing
palaeontologists in gaining employment and within the
community at large. In our part of the world, following
on from an essay commissioned for the upcoming
Encyclopedia Of
Palaeontology(Eds
Michael Diamond & Ron Singer, Fitzroy Dearborn
Publishers, Chicago), Museum of Victoria palaeontologist,
Tom Rich (in press), has analysed the publication record
and, in parallel, the history of vertebrate palaeontology
in the Australasian region. His finding that none of the
current professional VPs with full-time (tenured)
positions (in Academe, museums, surveys) in Australia is
under 40 is a shocker (see
New
Scientist
no.
1997).
There is of course still
plenty of opportunity for short-term contract work but
considered research on living and fossil organisms does
require a long-term approach, something which is hard to
get across to politicians and funding bodies with 3- and
5-year mindsets.
These problems and more
were discussed at a workshop held at the Senckenberg last
August - Paleontology
in
the 21st Century
which considered
the
needs
of
both
academe
and
industry.
Current
PS
president
Karl
W.
Flessa
(kflessa@geo.arizona.edu) made a report on this meeting
and a major policy document is planned. In addition, PS
instituted a new Employment Initiatives
Committeeto consider
how
the society
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