The problem with the Paleozoic

Unfossiliferous marine sedimentary rocks of Phanerozoic age are known to all field-oriented paleontologists. These troublesome units are often encountered in the field, perhaps cursed roundly for a moment or two, and usually shrugged off in pursuit of the next fossiliferous interval. Paleontologists tend not to discuss barren units, and they rarely publish on the absence of a fauna from what appears to be unaltered marine rock. But aren't barren marine sediments revealing something important about their paleoenvironment and possibly about the paleoenvironments of conformably adjacent fossil-bearing units? Shouldn't paleontologists be just as interested in knowing the locations and ages of unfossiliferous sediments as they are fossiliferous strata?