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The North American Paleontological Convention was founded by Ellis Yochelson and sponsored by the Paleontology Society. The meeting was first held in 1969 in Chicago. Six more have been held since then in Lawrence, Montreal, Denver, Chicago (again), Washington, D.C., and Berkeley in 2001. As the Berkeley conference was the first held in the "far west" this was the first one held in the far, far east of North America. There were about 300 participants, about half of which were students. There were representatives from all over North America as well as Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and several countries in South America.
In Nova Scotia we are fortunate to have several world class fossil sites within 2 hours drive of Halifax and we have field trips planned for the middle day of the conference to Wasson's Bluff (Triassic extinction site), Blue Beach (possible first tetra pod site, Tournaisian Gap), Joggins (world famous first reptile and classic tree site, proposed UNESCO World heritage site), and Arisaig (classic Silurian invertebrate site). Over half the participants went on these trips as well as the pre-meeting trip to Mistaken Point Ediacarian fauna (lead by Guy Narbonne, Jim Gehling and Doug Boyce) and the post-meeting trip to Gaspé Peninsula (lead by Pierre-Andre Bourque and Patricia Gensel) for some stunning Devonian reef exposures and the Miguasha Silurian fish site.
For our public lecture we were fortunate to have Dr. Paul Olsen to talk about his work on Wasson's Bluff and the Triassic extinctions where there was quite a lively discussion following the presentation as well and into the reception that followed.
During the conference there were three oral sessions running together for four days together with posters and exhibitors every day (June 20,21, 23, 24). There almost 300 hundred presentations (both oral and poster). These presentations included a wide variety of topics (as our theme implied). These included on June 20: Jaws! False teeth and gums-what makes a vertebrate a vertebrate; Theory and applications for Quantitative models of fossil form; Polar Paleontology: the fossil record of high latitude environments; and Astropaleontology; June 21: Diversity-abundance relationships in the fossil: measure and meaning; Ediacarian paleobiology: paleontological, molecular, embryological, and ecological constraints; Conquering the waters and the land; the first 250 million years of bony vertebrates; and Biases in the record of diversity and phylogeny; June 23: Carboniferous fauna and flora; Correlation of Devonian marine and terrestrial strata; The first step towards the development of taxonomic dictionaries for all Phanerozoic organisms; Graptolites: phylogeny, paleobiology and biostratigraphy; Early life-pre-Cambrian and early Paleozoic; and Taphonomy and paleoecology; and June 24: Extinctions, survivorship and adaptation; Mesozoic-Cenozoic vertebrates; Rates and dates: the promise and prospect of high resolution analysis of evolutionary rates; Mollusc systematics and evolution; and Monitoring in coastal environments with microfossils. As you can imagine these symposia covered the world in both geographical as well as in terms of geologic time. There were many lively discussions both in the sessions and afterwards. The poster sessions also prompted much discussion, as always, and gave people a chance to sit down and discuss their results. I cannot detail all the sessions but the Astropaleo session must be mentioned just because it was one of the few venues where people could talk freely and speculate wildly because that's all there is at the moment with virtually no hard data. We were fortunate to have representatives from NASA and private industry come and discuss future directions of paleontology of the solar system and beyond.
Abstracts were published in association with the University of California at Berkeley, Museum of Paleobiology in PaleoBios, v. 25, supplement to number 2 (June 2005). The field trip guide books for the day trips were The Joggins Cliffs of Nova Scotia: a window into the Carboniferous (J. Calder, M. Rygel, H. Falcon-Lang, M. Gibling, and A. Scott); Triassic-Jurassic faunal and floral transition in the Fundy Basin, Nova Scotia (P.E. Olsen, J.H.Whiteside and T. Fedak); Horton Bluff (Dev/Carb boundary- early tetrapod trackways) (D.B.Scott, C. Mansky, S. Wood, and R. Godfrey); and The stratigraphy and paleontology of the Ordovician-Silurian Arisaig Group, Nova Scotia (M.L. Melchin and R.A. MacRae). The pre-meeting guidebook is Life after Snowball: the Mistaken Point biota and the Cambrian of the Avalon (G. Narbonne, R.W. Dalrymple, M.La Flamme, J. Gehling, and W.D.Boyce) and the post meeting book is Silurian-Devonian Biota and Paleoenvironments of the Gaspé Peninsula and Northern New Brunswick (P.-A. Bourque, S. Desbiens and P. G. Gensel).
A gathering before the public on June 20
Paul Olsen discusses his lecture
With colleagues on June 20
A day in the field looking for plants and fish in the Gaspé
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