Development of Invertebrate Paleontology in America
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BULLETIN OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA VOL. 44. PP. 265-286 APRIL 30, 1933 PROCEEDINGS OF THE PALEONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY DEVELOPMENT OF INVERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY IN AMERICA PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS BY R. S. BASSLER (Read before the Paleontological Society, December 29,1932.) CONTENTS Page Historical background....................................................................................................... 265 Field of the Paleontologist............................................................................................... 269 Bibliographic aids............................................................................................................... 271 General statem ent................................................................................ ..................... 271 Bibliographic indices................................................................................................. 272 Description and illustration of fossils............................................................................ 274 Service Committee of the Paleontological Society..................................................... 277 Safekeeping of type specimens........................................................................................ 278 Current problems of invertebrate paleontology.......................................................... 279 H is t o r ic a l B a c k g r o u n d The address given annually by the retiring president of our Society has usually been the occasion for the presentation of new discoveries, or for philosophic deductions or observations on the broader phases of paleon tology and stratigraphy. In these times of economic storm and stress, however, it seems more appropriate that I should take stock of the progress of our science, briefly review the past, and consider the present, so that we may plan and build more firmly for the future, and it is par ticularly desirable that someone should call attention not only to our opportunities but to certain of our failings. I have restricted my re marks to invertebrate paleontology because of my greater familiarity with that division of the subject. My topics are matters well known to us all; indeed, perhaps so familiar that we do not always accord them proper attention in our work, and so I venture to recall them to you in the interest of better results in our science. American invertebrate paleontology set the standard for the world during the latter half of the nineteenth century. With all our resources and superior opportunities for publication, is this the case today? And, if not, why not ? (265) Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-pdf/44/2/265/3414963/BUL44_2-0265.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 266 E. s.- BASSLER----INVERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY IN AMERICA Paleontology had its beginnings in America in Colonial times and the early days of the Republic, when mastodon bones were frequently dis covered and described as remains of the gigantic men lost in the Noachian deluge. Thus, Cotton Mather, in 1714, in describing fossil elephant bones and teeth, identified them as relics of the antediluvian giants of the Scriptures. The work of our paleontologist-statesman, Thomas Jefferson, on the Great Claw or Megalonyx, read in 1797, is classic; and his continued studies of vertebrate paleontology after his election to the presidency, with the conversion of a part of the White House into a paleontological mu seum, are known to us all. These striking extinct vertebrate remains had greatest significance for students of zoology and evolution, and their study was usually pursued along these lines. It was not astonishing, therefore, that the paleontology of invertebrate animals and plants, fos sils less conspicuous but more interwoven with the science of stratigraphy, did not commence until a later date. Until 1820, American geology was generally dominated by the Werne rian ideas of William Maclure, although in 1818 Amos Eaton had published his “Index to the Geology of the Northern States” which, although still tinged with Wernerism, contained the first definite attempt to arrange the geological strata of North America in logical order. Here in the red sand stones of the Catskills, Eaton noted a fossil plant, identifying it as a petrified root of the common laurel. Long before this, however, in 1752, Jean Etienne Guettard had examined a collection of fossils from Canada and endeavored to establish a subdivision of the rocks, based on them, thus being one of the first men to recognize geology as an historical science. The decade in American geology which began in 1820 was, as George P. Merrill points out in his valuable volume, “The First One Hundred Years of American Geology,” noted for the first systematic effort in America to correlate strata by fossils. This decade was dominated by and named after Amos Eaton, the most prominent worker of the time. In the second edition of his index, Eaton took up the subject of fossils, classifying them as petrifactions and conservations. The latter were fossils still composed of the same material as the living organisms, while the petrifactions were relics made up of mineral matter which had run into the place occupied by the body before it decayed. The nomenclature of fossils was a simple matter at that time, and Eaton classified all organic remains under nine genera. For example, all fishes belonged, according to him, to the genus Ichthyolites, and all shells to Concholites. It was Thomas Nuttall, in the account of his travels in the Great Lakes region published in 1820, who Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-pdf/44/2/265/3414963/BUL44_2-0265.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 267 made the first serious attempt to correlate the rocks of North America by means of invertebrate fossils. Nuttall antedates by fifteen years similar efforts by Morton on the Tertiary of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and by a longer time the researches of James Hall and other New York geologists. Shortly after Nutt all’s work, there appeared some of the earliest descrip tions of species of American invertebrate fossils. Among these were those published by John J. Bigsby, a surgeon of the British Army, who was stationed in Canada. So much of the work of the next fifty years of American geology and paleontology, beginning in 1830, was done by the state geological surveys that Dr. Merrill has appropriately named it “The Era of State Surveys.” Early in this era Maclure and Eaton were still active, but there soon rose to prominence such paleontologists as Timothy A. Conrad and James Hall. Systematic paleontological research upon the Tertiary shells of North America commenced with Conrad’s first work upon the subject in 1832. With the inauguration of the Geological Survey of New York in 1836, and the appointment of James Hall as a member, Paleozoic in vertebrate paleontology came into its own, and the great series of New York paleontologic volumes was inaugurated. In succession other states initiated surveys, many of them devoting at least a part of their publica tions to paleontology. Ohio, Illinois, and Minnesota are conspicuous ex amples of states which added especially noteworthy contributions to in vertebrate paleontology. Then, in the middle of the century, Elkanah Billings was appointed on the Geological Survey of Canada under Sir William Logan, and for two decades he did excellent work upon the Paleozoic invertebrate fossils of that country. The latter half of the Era of State Surveys was conspicuous for various exploring expeditions to the West, which resulted especially in important additions to our knowledge of post-Paleozoic fossils. The Civil War brought forth men of great physical and moral courage for these expedi tions. The West was now beckoning, and Congress was willing to appro priate funds for its exploration. At first military in their nature, these expeditions soon added geographic explorations to the scope of their work. Then military, geographic, and geologic aims were combined, and finally geological and natural history researches became the prime objects of these endeavors. Hayden’s “Geological Survey of the Territories,” King’s “Geological Survey of the 40th Parallel,” Powell’s “Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region,” and Wheeler’s “Survey west of the 100th Meridian” are well known. Meek was the outstanding paleontologist of these surveys, although not officially connected with any of them. He early became Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-pdf/44/2/265/3414963/BUL44_2-0265.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 268 E. S. BASSLEE----INVEETEBEATE PALEONTOLOGY 11ST AMEEICA associated with Hayden, and continued to study the fossils collected by the territorial surveys until after Hayden’s death. Arriving in Washington in 1858, Meek had a room in the Smithsonian building where he lived and did all his work during the rest of his life. Had he possessed the energy of a Hall and been of a less retiring disposition, he undoubtedly would have become the outstanding paleontologist of this period. The territorial explorations culminated in 1879 in the founding of the United States Geological Survey, the greatest institution in the world’s history for the increase of geological knowledge. Under the Survey, invertebrate paleontology has been encouraged equally with vertebrate paleontology and paleobotany, and the many important memoirs by the paleontologist-director, Charles D. Walcott, and other