ABSTRACT: Photography and Illustration of Fossils in 20th-Century Paleontology

HINELINE, MARK, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA

The practice of describing and illustrating fossils has changed over time; it has a history. The first eight volumes (1927-1933) of the Journal of Paleontology, published by the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), set high but uneven standards for the reproduction of photographs. Beginning with the ninth volume in 1934, the journal became the joint publication of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists and the older Paleontological Society.

While these organizations carried out negotiations for joint publication, several paleontologists--including John B. Reeside, Jr., G. Dallas Hanna, and Raymond S. Bassler--aired their concerns about standards for the preparation and reproduction of illustrations and photographs of fossil specimens. Standards for reproducing images of microfossils were of particular interest.

Bassler's comments, in particular, were followed by a brief historical account of illustration practices; he complained of the poor quality of representations in paleontological monographs, in which "the illustrations are so diagrammatic that many of the species can not be accurately identified, and so require refiguring."

Geologists in other specialties, where line drawings were generally preferred to reproductions of halftone photographs, did not necessarily share paleontologists' concern for high reproduction standards; thus, discussion of such standards led to improvements only when paleontologists had exclusive editorial control over their specialist journal.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91012©1992 AAPG Annual Meeting, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, June 22-25, 1992 (2009)