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Tales of Long Ago—The Birth of Evolutionary Theory as a Scientific Discipline

A point of analysis which Van Couvering raises is that of determining relative abundance: "Determination of relative abundances for any particular site should be made in an equivalent manner; that is, only bones which are taphonomically and sedimentologically similar and equally identifiable should be used." While this idea (which came out of discussions with other contributors and with R. Bakker) seems logical, the fact is that bones are taphonomically and sedimentologically similar only for closely related taxa, for example calcanea of African antelopes, and only if they are of similar size. Bones of widely divergent taxa are never so similar. A rat calcaneum, for example, is vastly different from that of a rhino in size, density, shape, surface-to-volume ratio, and morphology, all factors which affect their survival, transport and burial, and their ease of identification. Trying to fit square faunal pegs into the round holes of analysis is not much different from fitting the round analytic hole onto the square peg. There are several general comments to be made about this volume. A serious omission is any consideration of what constitutes an appropriate sample for paleoecological analysis, and how one might get such a sample. The single greatest question that should arise in the paleoecological analysis of a site is how to extract the necessary data without further distorting the information already recorded in the sediments. Overlooking fossils because they are too small to be seen easily (or losing them through largemesh sifting screens), identifying only teeth and jaws, ignoring all vertebrate taxa but mammals (even leaving some behind in the field, e.g., turtles), not searching for pollen, invertebrates, and other non-vertebrate materials, only serve to bias further an already-biased accumulation of fossils. Nowhere in this collection of papers was there a comprehensive treatment of sampling, and although the paper of Behrensmeyer and Boaz indicated that field sampling procedures had been considered, their non-random choice of sampling sites may well have biased the outcome of the research to some extent. Arising from this complaint is a question regarding the research orientation of most (all?) participants. Can one consider community paleoecology without considering the non-mammalian component? Much information can be