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Actualistic Taphonomy: Death, Decay, and Disintegration in Contemporary Settings

When Leonardo da Vinci contended that fossil shells of Monferrato (Lombardy, Italy) were not left there by the biblical deluge, he argued the point by observing that neither live bivalves nor their empty shells possibly could have traveled 250 miles from the Adriatic to Monferrato in 40 days (MacCurdy, 1938; Cadee, 1990). Five centuries later, the approach pioneered by the Tuscan scholar has become a discipline in its own right: it will be referred to here as Actualistic Taphonomy. Taphonomy denotes the study of fossilization processes: a search for principles governing the transition of organismal remains from the biosphere to the lithosphere (Efremov, 1940). Actualistic denotes the study of present-day patterns and processes in search for clues helpful in investigating their historical records. Practitioners of Actualistic Taphonomy collect observations on death, decay, and burial of organisms in contemporary settings to aid and guide interpretations of diverse data offered by the fossil record.

This special issue of PALAIOS includes eight case studies representing a diverse cross-section of the research themes of modern actualistic taphonomy. All projects have been conducted in the same study area (San Juan Islands, Washington State, USA), and represent the efforts of students who attended a 5-week field course offered in summer 2002 at Friday Harbor Laboratories of the University of Washington (Fig. 1). The fact that the eight projects offer such a diverse spectrum of research themes despite the similarity in geographic setting and logistics is an excellent demonstration of the remarkable intellectual breadth of actualistic taphonomy.



FIGURE 1 —Diverse taphonomic research settings available around the San Juan Islands. (A) A sample of live and dead invertebrates obtained by dredging off the coast of San Juan Island (photograph by Adam Tomasových). (B) The well-sorted sand tidal flats of False Bay, San Juan Island; a few miles …