The ability to publish material on the Web holds the promise of far-reaching changes in the distribution of information, with many advantages over printing on paper. Web publication is relatively inexpensive; a book costs little more than an article to post, and large numbers of pictures can be published. The pictures can even be in color, moving, and accompanied by sound. Whole dissertations can be posted. Since many authors now write directly at the computer keyboard and shoot photographs using a digital camera, it is actually possible to write and publish an article without using paper at any stage. Publication can be in a refereed electronic journal such as Paleontologia Electronica, or on the author's own Website. It can be revised rapidly and inexpensively. The resulting work can be read by anyone who is connected to the Web, including many colleagues who could not afford to buy the paper version of the same work.

The disadvantages of electronic publication are on the other side of the coin from the advantages. Those who lack computers or the ability to type have no access to the Web at all. Cheap publication of large amounts of material can make authors and editors less critical, certainly less likely to distill the information into a few well-chosen words. The proliferation of unrefereed Websites makes academics wary of electronically published work. Electronically posted material is evanescent, vanishing when it is no longer posted. And paper copies are more convenient for comparing two articles at once.

If you search the Web for information on ichnology, several hundred sites appear. The number depends on the automated search engine and on the words used for the search; ichnology, trace fossil, dinosaur track, bioturbation, and bioerosion yield large numbers. The number of sites devoted to ichnology is not really in the hundreds; the search engines count any use of the searched term separately, and every page of a site. Also, as they include any site that lists the word ichnology as a link, many sites are mentioned simply because they link to other ichnologic sites.

The novelty of the Web makes a pioneer out of any person who posts an ichnologic site, and I have been impressed by the diversity of the sites that have been offered so far. Here is a gazetteer of a few notable Websites; their addresses or URLs are listed under References.

The most popular ichnologic site is that of Anthony J. Martin, whose Dinosaur Trace Fossils has attracted more than 40,000 visitors since it was posted in 1996. Most of us would be happy if we had even a few hundred people read our papers, and this one is not even finished yet. Dinosaur Trace Fossils is essentially a book in progress written for the layman, with careful explanations of basics and examples, photographs, references, and links to other sites. Tony Martin receives numerous suggestions from readers on how to improve the site, and he acts on many of them. As he puts it, this is a kind of review that our peers do not usually give us. And Tony makes a point of stating that he has never printed the entire Website on paper; it exists only in electronic form.

The ambitious Anthony Martin has posted two other ichnologic Websites, Introduction to Ichnology and the Ichnology Newsletter itself. Introduction to Ichnology, like Dinosaur Trace Fossils, is designed for the layman and, once completed, would make an excellent supplement for a college course. At present, the completed parts of this work in progress can be used as supplements for courses in ichnology or paleontology. Martin has also converted the Ichnology Newsletter into Web form, and posted parts of it on October 1, 1998. This site has already received hundreds of visitors, far more than the hundred or so people who bought it in hard copy.

Glen Kuban is another ambitious Website author. Only one of his several sites is ichnologic, a cluster of pages dealing with The Paluxy Dinosaur/"Man Track" Controversy and related topics. This is a substantial and thoughtful Website totaling more than one hundred pages, chiefly on the Lower Cretaceous dinosaur tracks exposed along the Paluxy River in Texas. For several decades, and in the face of extensive contrary evidence, some creationists have claimed that human tracks occur on the same horizons as dinosaur tracks, supporting their fundamentalist idea of a young Earth. An extensive bibliography by Paul Heinrich is included as one of the pages. Kuban's list of links to other sites on Dinosaur Tracks and Ichnology is notable.

Whole articles have been posted on the Web. Usually, this is done after publication on paper, as with the Ichnology Newsletter, but in some journals electronic publication comes first. Luis Buatois, Gabriela Mángano, and their coauthors have written two articles on Carboniferous ichnology for publication in the Kansas Geological Survey Current Research in Earth Sciences. In this case, the Web allowed refereed publication of long, profusely illustrated articles without consideration of page limits.

Completely different is Virtual Ichnology, by Øyvind Hammer (1996). Hammer, an artist as well as a paleontologist, is interested in computer modeling of shell growth and like processes. Virtual Ichnology shows how the foraging patterns of invertebrates can be modeled, and includes animation. Hammer (1998) published a refereed version of his work in another Website, the online journal Paleontologia Electronica.

Websites are especially valuable for announcing topical or constantly updated information. Newspapers commonly post their articles now, and one ichnologist, Stephen T. Hasiotis, has constantly taken advantage of the opportunity. If you search for "Hasiotis" on the Web, you will find several news articles on his work from 1996 to 1998.

Electronic publication makes it possible to distribute large numbers of photographic images at low cost. S. T. Hasiotis, T. M. Bown, and C. Abston scanned tens of photographs of trace fossils for their CD publication, Photoglossary of Marine and Continental Ichnofossils. The CD includes images of fossil crayfish burrows, termite nests, and so on, and was originally distributed gratis. Unfortunately, only a summary is available on the Web. This can be considered as a sort of "virtual museum."

A similar work is the Edward Hitchcock Virtual Ichnological Cabinet, put together by Paul Olsen of Columbia University as part of The Triassic-Jurassic Footprint Project. Here the idea is to show the specimens collected by Edward Hitchcock for his 1858 magnum opus, Ichnology of New England. The specimens are held by the Pratt Museum of Amherst University in Massachusetts. So far, only a few of the species are represented by posted images, but it is an excellent start.

Newark Basin Fossil Footprint Research Group displays the work of one research team on tracks. The University of Alberta Ichnology Research Group, led by George Pemberton, is also represented on the Web, as is the University of Colorado at Denver Dinosaur Trackers Research Group, led by Martin Lockley. Ideally, such Websites can display research as it is happening, recruit volunteers, reprint articles, and post bibliographies and links to other work. I hope to see more like them in the future.

The number of ichnologists who have posted their own Websites is growing, and addresses for some of them are listed under "Current Activities." For those who wish to put together interesting sites, I recommend a look at the sites of Allen Archer (Kansas State University) and Peter Jumars (University of Washington). These scientists have not only posted their vitae and news of current interest to their students, but also extensive bibliographies of their work, and even abstracts for many of their papers. Moreover, they have split their sites into pages of short length that do not take much time to appear on the screen.

I have not even tried to list the many brief amateur and professional Web pages that deal with dinosaur tracks. Lists of links can be found in the Websites of Glen Kuban and Anthony Martin. Some lead to ichnologic exhibits or parks, e.g., Welcome to Dinosaur State Park (Connecticut, USA); others attempt to survey the tracks of an entire region, e.g., a Dinosaur Trackways Index to Australia. Ichnos has a Website, as do many other scientific journals. You can even find coprolites for sale on the Web.

As this sampling shows, some ichnologists have not been shy in using the new technology. Hundreds of pages of ichnologic information have already been posted on the Web since 1995. In 1999, it is too early to tell how important the Web will become in our field, but it is clear that there are many niches left to fill in this new land.