>Concerning recent shells I have clearly in mind the importance of giving
>time details in the shell labels (I usually write even the day if I know it).
>But when it comes to fossils, the exact time of collecting seems less
>important and can give information more on when a site was accessible than
>on the specimens themselves.

Surely it is important. It telss folk when the fossil was collected.
Specimens have a history, especially when they eventually (hopefully)
make their way into an institutional collection.

>Apart the fact that I think on shell (recent & fossil) labels the valid
>rule is always "the more the better",  what the accuracy to be given to
>labels in this case?
>For example: when searching a single site for few times in a year or a few
>years, does it have any sense to attach to any shell its correct day of
>collecting?

Yes.

>May it be enough to just cite the period you used to go to
>that spot?

Not in my opinion!

>I've been following this discussion and got the idea that it might be
>usefull to create a grading system for the shell data as we have it
>for the shells
>themselves.

The HSN grading system unfortunately is nonsense. Since when does
good mean "not good"? Etc...

>By that way traders could give easily information about the
>quality of the data without adding it completely to their lists -
>which i think
>would save them a lot of work.

Not a bad idea, but I very much doubt it would end up being objective.

>I myself never
>thought about including for example water temperature or the weather
>conditions
>during collecting but now somebody mentioned it i find it a useful
>information.

In the vast majority of cases temperature and weather conditions will
be meaningless excess. Likewise wind speed and direction, wave height
etc. Not relevant, as the shore-dwelling molluscs are stuck there
whatever the conditions change to. For PELAGIC or swimming species
such data can be useful, however.
--
Andrew Grebneff
165 Evans St, Dunedin 9001, New Zealand
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