PalAss at 60

At the conclusion of the diatribe, which had dissected the sins of the Geological Society as seen by the younger palaeontologists and expanded on the subjectively assessed need for a Society and journal devoted solely to exhibiting the virtues of a neglected group of geologists, he merely said “Alright” and launched into a lengthy and rapid exposition of the Middle East Mesozoic stomatoporoids ill. [...] A full discussion ensued concerning the name and aims of the proposed Association, its relationships with existing societies, the holding of meetings, the proposed subscription, the financial aspects of establishing a new journal offering adequate illustration, and the format of such a journal. [...] As a consequence it was evident that the only solution to the problem was the initiation of a new society devoted to the publication of palaeontological papers. [...] At the risk of sounding boastful, I believe my own 1961 paper reconstructing the possible feeding mechanism of a certain aberrant Permian brachiopod was the very first in Palaeontology to express in its title an ambition to apply the principles of functional morphology to fossils, though by the end of the 1960s there were plenty. [...] PalAss at 60 17 Hugh Owen writes: As a member of staff at the British Museum (Natural History) as it then was (now the Natural History Museum, London), I, along with my colleagues, had wind of the possibility of forming an Association to further palaeontology and biostratigraphy in the UK – not before time as we were much the Cinderella of the geological establishment of the day.