Re: ps. on nomenclature

[Tompaleo@aol.com]

In a message dated 96-04-30 19:11:39 EDT, you write:

>To accomplish this goal of better all-round biogeological descriptions,
>probably needs international cross-disciplinary commissions, like that
>started a few years ago for the Global Change Program.  The problem seems
>to be that the information lies in somewhat academically separated fields
>that sometimes just don't talk well to each other.  For example, the

You might say that paleontologists must _articualte_ themselves better! ;-)

Seriously,
Interdisciplinary cooperation is the wave of the future! Of course there are
problems of "turf". We should all take lessons from the K-T debate which
brough together geo-types with bio-types with astro-types and phsyics-types
to help explain the possible extinction of the dinosaurs and many other taxa.
It also had a negative effect of exacerbating the differences and predjudices
held by researchers in differing fields and even within one's own field. The
K-T became personal!  I have seen and read of more personal attacks on the
various combatants and by them  than I have had on their argumnets for or
against (or at least it seems that way due to the level of rhetoric cast)!  
IMHO, everyone's field and specialty overlaps with another field and
specialty of someone else and in the case of reassembling paleoecologies and
ancient food webs, it involves people who have similar overlaps. Therefore
 there is a reduced  "friction potential" making it easier to accomplish a
particular project. . It won't be long before we do see more literature in
this vein. 

Regards,
Thomas R. Lipka
Paleontological/Geological Studies