Talk:Suzanne Duigan

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See this Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:12, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

"she pioneered paleoecology"

I can't find anything in Google that suggests Duigan "pioneered paleoecology," maybe you mean Australian paleoecology, coal seam paleoecology or palynology, or something else, but there's also nothing on Google to suggest this huge statement is true. While Google doesn't contain all knowledge, something this sweeping would probably make a blip on the Web if it were so. Please source or remove or clarify as necessary. 2601:283:4301:D3A6:79FB:F747:82E7:C781 (talk) 15:09, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Ok have a look at this page. and tell me how I should phrase someone who was one of the first to look at plants in a paleoenvironment. The article can be edited by IPs as it is not semi'ed. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:22, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

This page is unavailable to me. Can you please quote what the say? The problem is, it says this nowhere else. If she is that important to paleoecology, so important that she pioneered the field, it's going to be somewhere else, not one page in one book and nowhere else. Do you think that is incorrect, thinking that someone who pioneered a field would have at least a few online mentions, at least a few mentions in books, at least a few mentions in journals? Paleoecology is a huge field. If she pioneered it, that's a notable piece of information that has been shared among paleoecologists, yet I find it nowhere. 2601:283:4301:D3A6:54D1:18C6:6293:19F1 (talk) 20:41, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

I got access. The book is History of the Australian Vegetation: Cretaceous to Recent edited by Robert S. Hill, and the specific chapter, The Oligo-Miocene coal floras of southeastern Australia by Blackburn and Sluiter, is a chapter about specific coal measures in SE Australia.

It contains this information:

"Duigan (1966) studied selected micro- and macrofossil plant taxa from a palaeogeographical, ecological and evolutionary viewpoint."

"Few studies have approached the fossils from ecological or evolutionary viewpoints. Duigan (1966), in a landmark contribution, considered both macro- and microfossils in terms of their modern taxonomic relationships and the ecologies of equivalent modern vegetation types. It was concluded that Nothofagus, Agathis, and Lauraceae dominated regionally and coal-forming vegetation was dominated by specific gymnosperms and angiosperms."

This doesn't at all seem to carry the information she pioneered the field of paleoecology. This isn't even about the field. It's about studies of a coal measure in SE Australia. The landmark contribution is to the studies of these coal measures. This is a huge jump to she pioneered a sub discipline of paleontology! 2601:283:4301:D3A6:54D1:18C6:6293:19F1 (talk) 20:55, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, that is the more conservative way of interpreting it and I am happy to concede - I just would have thought that if there were older researchers who had been doing this then they'd have been mentioned..... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:23, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

But, paleoecology isn't even the topic of that chapter; they're clearly talking about her outstanding contribution to the studies of those particular coal measures. Her work also led, like a famous Southwest archeologist whose name I cannot think of, to a new multidisciplinary and methodical approach to the field studies of palynological sites, something she does not get credit for because of the timing and location of her research, although palynologists certainly acknowledge her while failing to write of her contributions for their value. Anyway, the pioneer for the field is probably Edward Forbes, but I'm not sure. The discipline has been around a while. 2601:283:4301:D3A6:5D00:5341:E4D4:2A2C (talk) 23:49, 13 March 2016 (UTC)