ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Life Past, Present, and Alien: The Aesthetic Development of Taphonomy as Planetary Fossil Knowledge

• In Event: Sciences of the Deep Past

English Abstract

This paper is a proposal for a history of taphonomy: the study of the decay, burial, and fossilization of biological organisms across geological time. Originating during the first half of the 20th century, taphonomy is recognized as a field in paleontology, zooarchaeology, physical anthropology, forensic science, and even astrobiology. Despite its multidisciplinary relevance, taphonomy remains an understudied subject in the history of science. In response to this absence, I trace the establishment of taphonomy between 1927 and 1962 through the work of Rudolf and Emma Richter, Johannes Weigelt, Ivan Antonovitch Efremov, Everett Claire Olson, and Wilhelm Schäfer. Much of the work during this thirty-five year period involved comparing fossil specimens with contemporary dead animals—an actualistic approach, where the processes affecting both past and present organisms were understood to be the same. I identify specific instances and modes of knowledge transfer among these figures in Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Particular attention will be given to forms of visual, diagrammatic, and narrative representation used to advance taphonomy in scholarly publications, such as photography, scientific illustration, mapping, diagrammatic schemes, and individualized creative practices in photo-montage and science fiction. I argue that this combination of artistic and scientific methods was pivotal in establishing taphonomy as a field, moving paleontology from a primary focus on fossil morphology and taxonomy towards an integrative paleo-ecological and planetary framework, one with present-day and future implications for understanding life on Earth and the search for life in the greater cosmos.

Author

• Ana María Gómez López, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands