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A task for Paleobiology at the threshold of majority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould*
Affiliation:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
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Extract

When asked how he might sum up his long life, an aged Benjamin Franklin replied that he had, at least, been useful to his fellows. Paleobiology is still young, as our journal has just completed 20 years and now begins this season of its majority, while the vibrancy of our subject certainly proclaims a vigorous incipiency. But academic generations are short, a mere 5 years or so, and Paleobiology has therefore enjoyed adequate time to demand judgment by accomplished results, not simple promise. When, fifteen years ago (6, 1, 80), I wrote a similar piece to celebrate the completion of this journal's first five volumes, I spoke in my title about “the promise of paleobiology”; now I must refer to “the task of paleobiology” and delineate what has been accomplished, and how much we have yet to do.

Type
Research Article
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Winter 1995 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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