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The problem with the Paleozoic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2015

Shanan E. Peters
Shanan E. Peters*
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences and Museum of Paleontology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109. E-mail: shananp@umich.edu
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Extract

Unfossiliferous marine sedimentary rocks of Phanerozoic age are known to all field-oriented paleontologists. These troublesome units are often encountered in the field, perhaps cursed roundly for a moment or two, and usually shrugged off in pursuit of the next fossiliferous interval. Paleontologists tend not to discuss barren units, and they rarely publish on the absence of a fauna from what appears to be unaltered marine rock. But aren't barren marine sediments revealing something important about their paleoenvironment and possibly about the paleoenvironments of conformably adjacent fossil-bearing units? Shouldn't paleontologists be just as interested in knowing the locations and ages of unfossiliferous sediments as they are fossiliferous strata?

Information

Type
Matters of the Record
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , Spring 2007 , pp. 165 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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