About This Journal
Field & Laboratory was founded as a serial journal by the Science Departments at SMU in 1932, mainly by faculty in geology and biology, especially Edwin Foscue, Ellis Shuler, and W. Mayne Longnecker. It eventually became a quarterly series. Papers to the journal were contributed by faculty and students, including some resulting from graduate theses. Texas and surrounding states were the focus, but topics of general interest were also included. Studies in chemistry and physics were included, outnumbered by those covering biology and geology. Among the most significant contributions are those that named many new kinds organisms such as plants and animals, both living and fossil. Natural history, ecology, and biogeography were other common topics of biology papers. Also of importance are papers that include original geological maps, named new stratigraphic units, and others that give detailed histories of, and the discoveries made by, early naturalists surveying Texas and surrounding areas for the first time. Important and well-known books on the local Texas flora came from the original research by SMU biologist Lloyd Shinners in this journal.
Field & Laboratory focused on shorter contributions, and was incorporated into the series “
Journal of the Graduate Research Center” in 1960, which also published longer papers, edited volumes, and books. Another journal, under the name, “
Fondren Science Series” (1949-) overlapped
Field & Laboratory in part.
