Re-reading the Fossil Record: How Paleontology Became 'Paleobiology'

During the second half of the 20th century, the discipline of paleontology underwent a major transformation.  One of the most significant aspects of this change was the development of a new focus among paleontologists on more biologically-oriented, evolutionary problems.  This agenda coalesced, by the late 1960s, into a movement that was labeled by its proponents ‘paleobiology.’  Paleobiologists actively sought methods, models, and approaches from other disciplines (such as population biology and ecology), and actively worked to change the perception among the wider biological community that paleontology was a dull, descriptive science capable of making no original contributions to evolutionary theory.  By the mid-1970s, an explosion of paleobiological interest produced a number of significant contributions to evolutionary theory, including Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, which is often seen as the movement’s signature accomplishment.

But where did the impetus for the creation of this subfield come from?  Why did some paleontologists think their discipline needed reinvention?  This talk will trace the rise of the paleobiological movement, and will focus on three central questions: First, What was the ‘problem’ that the invention of paleobiology was intended to solve? Second, how did promoters of paleobiology engineer this disciplinary change?  And third, does the story of paleobiology have any broader lessons for understanding how modern science works?