Southern California Association of 
Marine Invertebrate Taxonomists 
3720 Stephen White Drive 
San Pedro, California 90731 
December, 1999 SCAMIT Newsletter Vol. 18, No. 8 
SUBJECT: 
General Polychaete Problems 
GUEST SPEAKER: 
None 
DATE: 
14 February 2000 
TIME: 
9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p. m. 
LOCATION: 
Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History 
Worm Lab 
900 Exposition Blvd. 
Los Angeles, CA 
Chaetoderma marinelli (Schwabl, 1963) 
Spicules viewed using cross polarizers on a 
light microscope. Tick marks = 0.01 mm 
Photo by K. Barwick, 1/2000 
BEEN THERE: DONE WHAT? 
Last year, as the week, month, year, decade, 
century and millennium drew to a close we 
were all bombarded with ruminative analyses 
of what had preceded the moment, and what 
would follow. My turn! 
SCAMIT is a child of the Twentieth Century. 
Although we have been around for nearly two 
decades now, we are still quite a young 
organization (on the elephant, not the mayfly 
scale). What most of the members do as 
persons engaged in monitoring of the marine 
environment, is also an invention of the 
Twentieth Century. Even the biota itself, in 
terms of taxonomy, is largely a product of the 
century. Only a small portion of the subtidal 
biota of the Southern California Bight, 
primarily mollusks, large crustaceans, and 
large echinoderms was described prior to 1900. 
Much still remains to be described in the new 
millennium. 
FUNDS FOR THIS PUBLICATION PROVIDED, IN PART BY 
THE ARCO FOUNDATION, CHEVRON, USA, AND TEXACO INC. 
SCAMIT Newsletter is not deemed to be valid publication for formal taxonomic purposes. 
