Through a glass darkly

• Main Author: Beerling, David
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2007
• Subjects: Antarc*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192806024.003.0016

Throughout this book we have encountered a varied cast of historical characters, who have pioneered the development of palaeobotanical thought over the past two centuries. Although the fascination of plant fossils has an exceptional pedigree, reaching back to at least the eleventh century, Edward Jacob (Chapter 7) was the earliest of these ‘searchers of scientific truth’ introduced here. Jacob’s eighteenth-century claim to fame lay in his descriptions of the fossilized remains of exotic subtropical floras and faunas in the crumbling sediments around the coastline of the Isle of Sheppey. Jacob was followed by the true palaeobotanical pioneers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who established the scientific basis for the anatomical and microscopic investigation of fossil plants. Through their synthesis of palaeontological knowledge, they established the study of fossils as technical and exacting, rather than a mere hobby. And a common thread linking us with this ‘golden age’ of discovery and description is the notion that the fossils record some aspects of Earth’s ancient climates. It’s a telling reminder that curiosity compels us to ask why certain fossils are where they are and to speculate on what it means. Albert Seward, who examined Scott of the Antarctic’s fossils (Chapter 6), codified this concept best with his celebrated and timely 1892 essay. Seward’s essay opened the eyes of devotees of fossil plants to possibilities beyond the traditional activities of description and classification. The argument of this book is that the emerging modern synthesis sees the dawning of a new era in the study of fossil plants. I am advocating that this modern synthesis arises out of the seamless integration of new knowledge concerning the physiological and ecological behaviour of living plants and ecosystems into the subject of palaeobotany. The promise of incorporating a powerful and exciting third strand, the science of the genetic pathways controlling the form of organisms—evolutionary developmental ...