Deep Time: Paleobiology's Perspective [ Supplement to Volume 26(4)]

The fifteen chapters of Deep Time, authored by leading researchers in paleobiology, present an overview of current work and an outline of important unsolved problems in the field, revealing exciting interactions between the study of fossils and recent findings in biogeochemistry, genetics, developmental and functional biology, ecology, evolution, systematics, and sedimentary geology. Within the diversity of this research lie the unifying themes that are central to the discipline—the idea that the histories and past behaviors of living systems are key to understanding their workings, and that "deep time" is a perspective paleobiology alone brings to the study of living things. Collectively, these pieces are a impressive demonstration of the accelerating strength of paleobiology as a science, and function as an invaluable overview of a field that documents not only the history of biological systems, but also uses that history to reveal the processes that allow living systems to respond to change.

Douglas H. Erwin and Scott L. Wing are both research curators in the Smithsonian Institution’s Department of Palebiology.