Actuopaleontology: The strength of its limitations

It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of [actualistic projects] by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other words, theirfundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their supeflcial design flaws. [paraphrased from Douglas Ad-ams, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, 1985, p. 1771 Actuopaleontology (actualistic approach) aims to improve our understanding of the Past en-tombed in the fossil record by studying the patterns and processes observed in the Present. In other words, the present is used as the key to the past. A significant proportion of actualistic studies deals with '...life and death of organisms in their Recent habitats, including the post-mortem history of their remains, ichnology and the study of facies... ' (Cadee 1991: pp. 11-12). Such studies, referred to by the German term 'Actuopalaontologie ' (Richter 1928), are an essential ingredient of paleontology because they can, and often do, greatly improve the reli-ability and detail of paleoenvironmental and paleobiological interpretations. Following man