relation ships may not always be directly measured, however, requiring an 
indirect or deductive approach; for instance, we may wish to assess the effect 
of a storm, pollution event, change in salinity, temperature, etc. on a species 
population after the event has taken place. In the absence of data about 
pre-disturbance rates of growth, death, and reproduction, we are totally 
dependent on indirect techniques. This kind of after-the-fact problem is 
common in paleoecology and promises to be an increasingly important 
approach in pollution biology*. 
Subject matter of the present article has been extracted and condensed from 
initial drafts of a manual which is currently being prepared for the 
Environmental Protection Agency * 2 3 4 . The purpose of this manual is to bring 
together and organize paleoecological literature so that it may be of use to the 
pollution biologist confronted with after-the-fact monitoring 2 problems. 
The Skeletal Record 
Skeletonized organisms provide an opportunity for deducing ecologic 
relationships in the past. The skeleton often contains a record of dynamic life 
and death processes, and provides both ontogenetic and demographic^ 
information. Ontogenetic data are related to the life history of an individual. 
Growth rates may be resolved to a high level of resolution from mineralized 
tissue showing growth banding correlated with lunar and/or solar cycles, or 
seasonal changes in water temperature, salinity, day length, primary 
productivity, etc. Biological events, such as season of reproduction and death, 
may also be recorded. Demographic data are related to population structure 
and its maintenance; growth, mortality, recruitment, and migration. The unit 
of study is a single species population. In the present article, we will limit our 
discussion to extraction of ontogenetic data. 
* Paleoecologic research over the past decade has developed many techniques for 
reconstructing paleoenviroments (30-32). Much of this literature is unknown to 
neontologists. 
2 
Preparation of the manual is supported by Environmental Protection Agency grant 
R 804-909-010. 
3 
The term monitoring is used here to describe reconstruction of an organism’s history 
of growth, reproduction, and mortality as preserved in its skeletal parts. Inferences 
about environmental causes for the observed record are, by definition, indirect and 
deductive. 
4 
Demography, taken literally, means writing about the people (Gr. demos, the people + 
to write). The term was originally used to describe statistical studies of human 
populations; births, deaths, marriages, etc. We use demography in a broader sense; the 
statistical description of populations of any taxonomic group. 
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