186
photypes should not be excluded; nonetheless the
author is undoubtedly in a position to decide.
As for the biostratigraphy, M. H. R. Hessel
shows that Mytiloides rnytiloides and M. hercynicus
can be used to characterize the Middle and Upper
Lower Turonian, respectively. Correlations are
given with Mexico and Nigeria. Other stratigraph-
ical relationships are also discussed, with a less
degree of accuracy.
As a conclusion, attempt is made by M. H. E.
Hessel to reconstruct the history of the site. The
rates of sedimentation proposed by the author
have however to be taken with great cautiousness.
Although problematic, Stromatactis from the
Palaeozoic is more likely to be of diagenetic origin
(direct crystallization of calcite) rather than to be
considered as an algae. I do not clearly understand
why the absence of ammonites suggests a greater
depth, etc. As a whole, the environmental recon-
structions together with accurate explanations are
extremely informative.
This publication is a very interesting one. The
results concerning the inoceramid taxonomy, their
possible phylogeny, their ecological adaptation,
and their spatial and vertical distribution are
important. A need for further studies would be a
suitable conclusion to this stimulating paper.
Claude BABIN(Villeurbanne)
Paleoecology: Concepts and Applications by J. R.
Dodd and R. J. Stanton Jr. Second Edition.
Wiley, Chichester, USA. 1990. 2nd ed. 502 pp.
ISBN 0-471-85711-4. Price: £59.00.
This is the second edition of a book I reviewed
nine years ago and to which I was mostly favoura-
bly inclined. It is, as is well known, no easy task
to revise one's own text and it can be very difficult
to see what needs to be improved and what should
be cut out. One becomes enslaved by the written
word, as it were. The present product is more of
a "face-lift" than a new body and I shall, therefore,
confine my comments to the newer aspects I have
identified and what has happened, if anything, in
respect of the treatment of subjects in the first
edition about which I was not very enthusiastic.
Taphonomy has been upgraded and now has its
own chapter. Generally speaking this section is a
genuine betterment and rough edges have been
BOOK REVIEWS
smoothed. Taxonomic uniformitarianism has been
usefully condensed and now reads much better.
However, the part beginning on p. 59 has been
greatly over-generalized. For example, ostracods
do not display an invariable relationship between
surface-sculpture and sedimentary properties
(grain-size), despite the assertions made in the
reference cited, now 15 years old. It is not difficult
to find any number of examples in which highly
ornamented carapaces, together with smooth
forms, occupy the same palaeoenvironment,
marked by fine-grained sediment: e.g. associations
in the Paleocene and Recent of West Africa, Got-
landian, etc. Figure 3.4 is still not a useful diagram
and should have been deleted. The line-fitting for
Mytilus cannot be said to be other than dubious.
Much space is devoted to the "engineering solu-
tion" of the hypothesized swimming ability of
ammonites. However, a model based on the flume-
measured water-resistance associated with particu-
lar shell-shapes can do no more than indicate a
possible advantage accruing to shape, but it cannot
provide a basis for conclusions concerning swim-
ming prowess. There are more holes in that argu-
ment than in an Emmenthaler cheese. Muscular
patterns preserved on ammonite shells do not
support the hypothesis of an active life style, as
has been pointed out by Harry Mutvei. On the
contrary, indications deriving from foraging mod-
els suggest life-styles of browsing and ambush
rather than pursuit. Data on living dibranchiates
support the mathematical simulations. Consider,
for example, ammonites inhabiting the very shal-
low, trans-Saharan epicontinental environment of
the Cenomanian-Turonian. A wide range of shell-
types occurs in the same spatially restricted envi-
ronment; moreover, many species display an excep-
tionally wide range of variation, from inflated to
compressed, as has been well shown by the work
of W. J. Kennedy for several groups; these funda-
mental papers on ammonite palaeoecology are not
mentioned. The taphonomic history of cephalopod
shells remains untreated in the book and the whole
important area of nekroplanktonic dispersal of
cephalopod shells (and other groups) is ignored.
Although two references to drilling gastropods
are made in the text, this important area of popula-
tion dynamics is not given anything like adequate
consideration. Numerous papers on the subject
have appeared over the last ten years, including
BOOK REVIEWS
articles in the journals that seem to be most
favoured by the authors. Why not refer to the
results of Jennifer Kitchell and her coworkers?
Figure 7.24 is still there and it still tells us
nothing of note. The diagram showing the orienta-
tions of 141 bones from the Harper quarry is
worthless and in no way conveys anything of use.
This is, of course, not the fault of the authors of
the book, but some other example, and there are
many to choose from, should have been selected
to illustrate the point in question. This leads me
to the way in which statistical procedures are
presented~ particularly multivariate analysis. The
notes on Q-mode and R-mode methods are
strangely garbled and sadly dated; if it is thought
necessary to refer to such methods, why not give
the reader a modern account of what can be done.
There is no dearth of good published material.
The treatment of morphological variation is out
of context and out of tune. There is, for example,
a vast body of literature on the analysis of ecophe-
notypic variation now available. At least the work
of Russell Lande should have been noted. As
regards diversity, excellent sources are not referred
to. This is a subject that requires expert guiding,
such as can be found in the seven-volume work
on Statistical Ecology, edited by Gopal Patel. This
treatise tells one all one needs to know about
indices of diversity including their use and misuse.
Recent Dutch work has greatly expanded the scope
of "community analysis", for example, the funda-
mental contributions being made by C. J. ter Braak
and his colleagues.
It is comforting to see that some non-
anglophone references occur. Unfortunately, the
very important contributions of the various French
schools have been completely missed: There are
no references to the inescapably significant results
of the Bordeaux school (Carbonel, Peypouquet,
Ducasse) nor are Anne-Marie Bodergat's (Lyon)
studies on salinity tolerance referred to and what
has happened to the exciting work being done in
Japan, for example Katsumi Abe's palaeoecologi-
cal studies?
Summing up, I still find the book to be useful,
but I fear that the second edition has not gone far
enough towards updating the subject-matter. The
reservations I held nine years ago about the scope
of the first edition have not been dissipated.
Richard REYMENT (Uppsala)
187
Dinosaur Tracks by T. Thulborn. Chapman and
Hall, London. 1990. 410 pp. Price £35,
hardcover.
In 1974 Hartmut Haubold, a German who may
be considered the world's leading specialist on
fossil footprints, published a work entitled Die
fossile Saurierfdhrten (Ziemsen, Wittenberg-
Lutherstadt; 168 pp.). This was an excellently writ-
ten and excellently illustrated little work, bringing
together a great deal of useful information and
data that had hitherto been obtainable only
through prolonged searchings into a diffuse litera-
ture. In consequence, after gaining Dr. Haubold's
permission, I sought to publish an English transla-
tion of his book, since I was sure it would be
valuable to palaeontologists. Consequently, I
approached a series of publishers in Great Britain
and the United States, setting forth the idea. All
of them rebuffed me. In essence, they said: "It
won't sell. No-one is interested in fossil foot-
prints".
Perhaps, at that time, they were right. That was
the period when, upon my submitting a paper on
vertebrate footprints to the Canadian Journal of
Earth Sciences, it was turned down on the strength
of the report of one of the vertebrate palaeontolo-
gists who served as referee. He wrote simply: "I
have not read this paper, but I urge you to reject
it since I disapprove of all publication on fossil
footprints"!
Over the ensuing quarter-century' such attitudes
have come to be modified. Ten years later, when
a revised and enlarged second edition of Haubold's
work was published (Saurierf~ihrten. Ziemsen,
Wittenberg-Lutherstadt; 231 pp.), the climate of
opinion was already changing. It was being recog-
nized belatedly that footprints are the only direct
evidence that we have concerning dinosaurs and
other extinct creatures as living, functioning ani-
mals; that footprints - - and only footprints - - can
tell us, not merely about their pedal soft morphol-
ogy, but also about their speed of movement, their
social behaviour and their distribution (both
through the positive evidence of the presence of
their footprints in, and the negative evidence of
their absence from, particular sedimentary envi-
ronments).
This philosophical transformation was exempli-
fied when an international symposium on "Dino-