View - Kowalewski, M. - Virginia Tech

INTRODUCTIONTHE FOSSIL RECORD OF PREDATIONAn IntroductionBiologists and paleontologists agree that direct interactions among organisms are importantecological mechanisms that may play a key role in evolution. Among various biotic interactions, predationhas often been recognized as a particularly significant ecological force. Its evolutionary importance ismuch more controversial, however, and researchers still debate the role predation has played in shapingthe history of life. The fossil record is our primary source of the data needed to address this issue. Inrecent years, paleontologists have provided critical documentation of prey-predator interactions overevolutionary timescales, and from there have generated fruitful hypotheses regarding the history of lifeand the role of predation in evolution.The goal of this short course is to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the currentknowledge and understanding of the fossil record of predation—from direct indicators provided bytrace fossils and coprolites to more indirect proxies provided by taphonomic data, functional morphology,and phylogenetic relationships. The short course includes presentations by experts in the areas ofmicropaleontology, invertebrate paleontology, paleoentomology, vertebrate paleontology, andanthropology. The fossil record left by parasites is also included because predators and parasites representendmembers of the same ecological adaptation. This short course is organized into three distinct sections.The first, methodological, section (Methods) provides an overview of collecting methods, analyticaltechniques, and statistical strategies that are applied in the study of the fossil record of predation.Reviews from different fields, from invertebrate paleontology to physical anthropology, bring togethervarious methodological perspectives and offer guidelines from collecting strategies to analyticalapproaches.The second, descriptive, section of the short course (Patterns) provides an up-to-date overview ofcurrent knowledge on the fossil record of predation. Various lines of evidence, from trace fossils tofunctional morphology, are reviewed for microfossils, marine invertebrates, terrestrial invertebrates,and vertebrates. The descriptive section illustrates the wealth of data already amassed by researchers,but also points to various temporal and taxonomic gaps that call for future research.The descriptive section sets the empirical stage for the interpretive, process-oriented section of theshort course (Processes). This final section focuses on higher-order interpretations of the fossil recordof predation, including models derived from or tested against it. This section of the short course presentsvarious views regarding the role of predation in shaping the history of life on our planet.To our knowledge, this short course volume represents the first book that focuses solely on thepaleobiology of predation. The volume provides a comprehensive synthesis of our knowledge of thefossil record of predatory behavior, demonstrates the amazing wealth of data on predator-prey interactionsthat can be extracted from the fossil record, and shows how these data are instrumental in developingnew interpretations and hypotheses regarding the evolutionary history of ecological interactions. Wehope that this short course will stimulate further research on predation and aid future investigators inidentifying unexplored and fertile areas of study.We thank the reviewers R. Alexander (Rider University), R. Bambach (Harvard University), A.Behrensmeyer (Smithsonian Institution), J. Bernhard (University of South Carolina), K. Chin (Universityof Colorado), G. Dietl (North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina atWilmington), J. Farlow (Indiana-Purdue University), D. Fisher (University of Michigan), T. Hansen(Western Washington University), S. Hasiotis (University of Kansas), G. Haynes (University of Nevada),A. Hoffmeister (Virginia Tech), L. Leighton (San Diego State University), D. Meyer (University of1