11 - Taphonomy as a historical science

Summary

I am still learning.

Michelangelo

Major themes

Would we really understand the Earth and its Life if we only understood the present? Geology is the study of the history of the Earth and its Life. Taphonomy is no different. Taphonomy, and the more inclusive disciplines of paleontology and geology, are historical sciences (Chapter 1). The ultimate value of geology is that there are patterns and processes that can only be the documented by the geological record (Martin, 1998a).

One of the major themes of this book is that biogenic particles and assemblages exhibit an incredible diversity of taphonomic pathways and histories (Chapters 2, 3). However, historical sciences find themselves in a nebulous realm: there are often too few parts to average their behavior and too many to account for separately with their own differential equation (Allen and Starr, 1982; see also Martin, 1998a). In such situations, it is very difficult to formulate laws, which presumably express unfailing predictive relationships between objects, processes, etc., except under the most restrictive of conditions (as is usually the case in the reductionist approach), much less rules or principles.