The Palaeontology Newsletter Contents 64 Editorial 2 FOREWARD by the President 3 Association Business 4 Association Meetings 51st Annual Meeting 16 Advert: Masters Geoscience at Plymouth 19 From our correspondents The spirit of biodiversity 20 Cladistics: Consensus trees 28 PalaeoMath 101: Groups I 35 Advert: Linnean tercentenary 46 Meeting Reports 47 The origin and evolution of PalAss I 68 Advert: Volunteer Placements 73 Soapbox: tea & biscuits? tea & posters? 74 Future meetings of other bodies 76 Advert: UCL MSc in Micropalaeontology 89 Reporter: Gray’s Anatomy of Beliefs 90 Outside The Box: Scientific publishing 94 Graduate opportunities in Palaeontology 97 Book Reviews 98 Special Papers in Palaeontology 77 107 Palaeontology vol 50 parts 1 & 2 109–110 Reminder: The deadline for copy for Issue no 65 is 18th June 2007. On the Web: <http://www.palass.org/> ISSN: 0954-9900 Newsletter 64 Editorial A new year and the start of a brand new series! Entitled “Outside the Box”, this new series of articles will explore the fringes of our subject and those folk who use or used fossils but aren’t/ weren’t palaeontologists or evolutionary biologists (e.g. geochemists, structural geologists, what have you). At least, that was my original, somewhat blinkered idea. Fortunately, our very own Newsletter Reporter Al McGowan was on hand to realise its full potential and noted that “such a column would actually chime in well with some of the movements out in the arts world such as ‘Science in Fiction’ as written by the likes of Ian McEwan and Will Self. Ken MacLeod (a hard SF writer who is a fellow Glasgow graduate, although he graduated in the late 1970s then studied biomechanics for his PhD) uses palaeontology, geology and archaeology extensively in his second series of books…”. So that’s what we envisage, and hope to attract a range of articles from artists, writers, scientists etc. Any contributions (or suggestions for contributors) are more than welcome! The series kicks off with an article by Jess Pollitt, who actually used to be a palaeontologist (perhaps deep down she still is?), having studied the MSc in Palaeobiology at Bristol. She’s now a Very Important Person in the Geological Society of London Publishing House, but still, it would appear, putting some of her palaeo-related skills to good use…. Unless you have been living in a deep, dark cave, unconnected to the Internet and with no letter box to receive the Newsletter, you won’t have failed to appreciate that our dear Association is 50 years young this year! There are extensive write-ups in this issue of the Newsletter of the 50th Annual Meeting and Macroevolution Seminar that took place in Sheffield in December. Also, part one of a two-part series on the history of Pal Ass, to be concluded in the next issue. Finally, an erratum from Newsletter 63, page 53. In the meeting report on the William Buckland 150th Anniversary Symposium, reference was made to his discoveries in “Kirkland Cave”… As pointed out to me by Mr K. Phipps, this should have read “Kirkdale Cave”. Richard Twitchett Newsletter Editor <[email protected]> Newsletter 64 FOREWORD As The Association already hastens into its second half-century, it is a great privilege and pleasure to have become the 25th President. The 50th Annual Meeting at Sheffield was a fine tribute to the occasion, reflected in the increasing standard of talks and posters that we have now come to expect almost as normal. The high percentage of younger people involved in the presentations is a sign of great health for the future of palaeontology. And what a wonderful setting in the Cutlers Hall for the 50th Annual Dinner. The earlier Annual Address by Art Boucot, and the presentation of Lapworth Medals at the Dinner to Bill Chaloner and Dolf Seilacher, were appropriately fitting parts of our celebrations. We are especially grateful to Charles Wellman and his colleagues for making the Sheffield meeting such a resounding success. But we are also looking forward to a vibrant future. Membership is growing and we are now a truly international Association with widespread membership from throughout the world. Our journal, Palaeontology, and our monographic series, Special Papers in Palaeontology, are heavily subscribed and overloaded with submissions, attesting to their high quality ratings. All back issues of the journal are now available online to the membership, and we will be seeking to add to such services over the next few years. Many people are engaged in putting these programmes into place. Successive Councils, Editors and our Executive Officer work extremely hard to maintain our standards and services. We encourage the Membership at large to become increasingly involved with suggestions and comments via the Association Website and in the Newsletter. Our Overseas Representatives, in eleven countries throughout the world, warrant equal thanks in promoting our international profile. I must pay one particular acknowledgement, to our immediate Past President, Sir Peter Crane, for the large amount of work that he has done for the Association over the past two years, partly from his peripatetic base in Chicago. His wise counsel and leadership have been instrumental in guiding us into an exciting future; we wish him well in his return to the USA. And finally, to Uppsala in December 2007, our 51st Annual Meeting. We have met outside the British Isles on two previous occasions, in Copenhagen (2001) and Lille (2004). But Uppsala in the snow and cold will be special – Dr Graham Budd tells me so!! Uppsala has a particularly important place in my life, because I spent almost three years there on separate periods of sabbatical leave, with probably about three more years in total on ‘short term visits’ at different times. It is a lovely city, with long University traditions, and of course it will be the tercentenary of the birth of Linnaeus. Graham assures me that the myth of expensive living in Sweden will be dispelled by the University provision of a new accommodation hostel and new conference centre – so please make every effort to come. Meanwhile, very best wishes to everyone for 2007. Michael Bassett President National Museum of Wales Newsletter 64 4 Association Business Awards Dolf Seilacher awarded the Lapworth Medal Dolf is one of the world’s most renowned invertebrate palaeontologists, widely celebrated for his visionary and inspired interpretations of the fossil record. He has made his most significant contributions to four areas of palaeontology: trace fossils, morphodynamics, the study of exceptionally preserved fossil deposits (Lagerstätten), and Ediacaran assemblages. In the latter he is especially recognised for proposing the innovative (and controversial) hypothesis of the Vendobionta. In each of these fields he has stimulated research with fundamental discoveries and iconoclastic interpretations. In 1992 he was awarded the Crafoord Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which is arguably the closest an earth scientist can get to being a Nobel Laureate. Some of his most cited work has been in the field of morphodynamics, recently acknowledged at his 80th birthday symposium, organised in Yale. Dolf’s major contribution to our understanding of the evolution of morphology was in emphasizing that function is an important but far from complete explanation of organic form. He formalized this realization in 1970 as Konstruktions-Morphologie (constructional morphology), recognizing the influence of phylogeny and architecture in addition to adaptation. This ‘triangular’ approach was very influential at a time when there was little interest in constraints on the evolution of form. In 1990, twenty years on, Dolf expanded the triangle to include an environmental dimension, although this can not be measured directly and is important mainly conceptually. He has applied the methods of constructional morphology to a range of organisms from vendobionts to barnacles, from clams to crinoids. Dolf illuminates his results with the iconography of his line drawings and his unique explanatory terminology. Dolf’s influence on our science is evidenced by the infiltration of his terminology into our everyday working vocabulary – constructional morphology, Lagerstätten and vendobionts. There is no other European palaeontologist more richly deserving of the career recognition that the Lapworth Medal bestows. Newsletter 64 Hodson Fund award to Dr Paul M. Barrett (Natural History Museum) and Dr Guy Harrington (University of Birmingham) Dr Paul Barrett Paul has become, at the age of 34, an internationally known and leading authority on dinosaur palaeobiology and evolution. The subject of his PhD, completed in 1998, concerned the functional morphology and evolution of herbivory in dinosaurs. Since then, Paul’s on-going original and collaborative work on this and other topics has contributed significantly to the UK’s science base, especially in terms of macroevolutionary studies, the application of novel techniques to palaeontology – Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and building collaborative networks with partners overseas (China, Japan, South Africa, USA and France). He has tested the utility of GIS in a NERC-funded study of large-scale palaeontological patterns by addressing the biostratigraphy of Late Triassic terrestrial vertebrates from North America and Europe, and demonstrated the effectiveness of GIS as a palaeontological tool over extended spatial and temporal scales. He has built on that work to investigate hypotheses of dinosaur–plant co-evolution and to test ecological associations among Cretaceous dinosaurs and plants on a current NERC grant. In addition to his work on palaeobiology, Paul has published on dinosaur systematics and taxonomy, with an emphasis on faunas from the UK, China, Japan and southern Africa (funded by the Royal Society, the National Geographic Society and other charitable funding bodies). His strong collaborative international links, especially with colleagues in China and, recently, in South Africa, have done much to further research on Early Jurassic faunas, particularly the early evolution of sauropodomorphs in China.