A History of the Society From 1976-2001

SEPM celebrated its 75th anniversary at the Annual Meeting in Denver in June 2001. I was asked to present a history of the Society during the past 25 years at the Special Jubilee dinner and to provide a written account for the proceedings of the Jubilee Symposium. The following is that written account. The 18 appendices noted in the text are not printed here but can be accessed at the SEPM Home Page or by contacting the SEPM Executive Director. In May of 1976, The Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, a Technical Division of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, celebrated its 50th Anniversary at its Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The occasion was justifiably festive. As chronicled in the eloquent historical summary by R. Dana Russell and Ruth Tener (Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 1981), the Society had grown from the 19 micropaleontologists, who perceived in 1926 the need for a separate organization, to a membership of more than 4400 (Fig. 1). It issued two widely circulated periodicals, the Journal of Paleontology and the Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, and it was about to publish the 24th of its highly respected Special Publication series. In addition, the Society had recently held its first Short Course and had published two well received Short Course Notes (the first for a course sponsored by its Pacific Section). It commemorated its 50th Anniversary by releasing the first two volumes in a new Reprint Series. Figure 1 Total members of SEPM (solid line), members taking the Journal of Sedimentary Petrology (dashed line), and members taking the Journal of Paleontology (dotted line), 1926-1976 (from Russell and Tener 1981). The Society in 1976 had 6 Regional Sections, was supported by 6 Standing Committees, and was governed by a Council composed of 8 members. Since 1937, …