TRILOBITES AND TRILOBITOLOGY IN CANADA
CD-ROM

$12.00 Cdn./U.S. (Free Shipping)

************************************************************

ABSTRACT    Trilobites were picked up, literally in passing, by different travellers through the Canadian wilderness, perhaps as early as a thousand years ago. Canadian trilobites were first illustrated by J.J. Bigsby in the 1820s. With the 1856 appointment of Elkanah Billings as paleontologist to the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC), these fossils began to be used to solve geologic problems and became an essential aid for the bedrock mapping that was the principal focus of the GSC. George Frederic Matthew, truly a professional amateur, worked on Cambrian trilobites of Maritime Canada from his home in Saint John, New Brunswick while paleontologists from the United States sought and found productive research areas in western Canada (C.D. Walcott of the Smithsonian) and eastern Canada (Charles Schuchert and his Yale graduate students). The ‘30s and ‘40s brought new and unexpected players to the Canadian trilobite scene – Teiichi Kobayashi from the Imperial University of Tokyo and Franco Rasetti, the Italian nuclear physicist cum paleontologist from Laval University. In the‘50s and ‘60s no trilobite paleontologist was on the staff of any Canadian university, but paleontologists from U.S. and British universities continued to work on Canadian trilobites – notably Harry Whittington on faunas from western Newfoundland and from the Burgess Shale. GSC paleontologists dealt expeditiously with Cambrian and Ordovician trilobites during the active period of reconnaissance mapping in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Starting in the ‘80s the trilobite focus shifted to the universities as the GSC virtually abandoned Paleozoic paleontology. At about this time, four trilobite paleontologists began research and graduate teaching at universities of Montréal, Alberta, Toronto and Brock. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, clearly the apogee of Canadian trilobitology, active research resulted in the completion of a dozen master’s theses and five doctoral theses on Canadian trilobites at Canadian universities plus a major flurry of papers and monographs. Budget shortfalls and changing priorities in the 1990s translated into lack of academic positions for younger Canadian trilobite paleontologists who either abandoned paleontology entirely or took positions at American universities. Now, at the start of a new millennium, only a single Canadian university involves graduate students in trilobite research.

**************************************************************************