JD_shalom said:
Hey people.
I got this essay topic at school.
"All fossils do not have the same biostratigraphic and palaeoecological utilities (uses)." Discuss with reference to examples.
Basically the lecturer said that it means not all fossils could be used to tell age or to determine the environment in which it lived or something like that.
Anyone cares to help in any way with how I should write this essay or the content of it? He wants at most 2500 words!
James
I think you might have missed the point of the essay. When the professor says that not all fossils have the same biostratigraphic utility, that's just a fancy way of saying that some fossils are 'indicator species' for a particular era, while others are so commonly found that they can't be used to indicate any era at all.
The same thing is true for paleoecological utility. Some species are clearly indicative of certain paleoecological environments (marsh, jungle, tidal flats, etc.) while others are found in so many different locations that they don't really tell you anything about the ancient environment.
If I read this correctly, it's just a cleverly worded request for you to do three things:
1. Identify a group of fossils that are only found in certain strata and nowhere else - then show why that is important to understanding the chronology and biology -
2. Identify a group of fossils that are so specific in the kind of environment where they lived, that their presence indicates something really important about the environment (i;.e., this creature ONLY lived in carboniferous forests, or this creature only lived in salt marshes);
3. And now set up the contrasts: identify another set of fossils that are so widespread and so common that no useful information about the dating, ecology or biology can be drawn from those fossils.
Of course, I could be wrong.
