Anyone have any Paleobotany Classification Data?

[Una Smith]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2001, Beach, James H wrote:

>The Specify Software Project is looking for a paleobotanical classification
>in a database format that anyone might be willing to share as an authority
>file for specimen cataloging.

Can you be more specific?  There are several possible classification
systems:  preservation type, organ type, systematic, etc.

If you want a systematic classification (I suspect you do), I have to
say there are none worth adopting.  The best, Plant Fossil Record 2,
reflects published (and mostly spurious) assignments of fossil taxa
(angiosperms only) to modern families or genera, and from there the
classification is based entirely on modern plants.  There are a few
exceptional groups where fossils are diverse but have few or no modern
relatives, but these groups have essentially no good classification
between the ranks (oops, pardon my dirty word!) of class and genus.

        Una Smith               una.smith at yale.edu

        Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
        Yale University
        New Haven, CT  06520-8106