2016
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0130
|View full text |Cite
|
Sign up to set email alerts
|

The non-uniformity of fossil preservation

Abstract: The fossil record provides the primary source of data for calibrating the origin of clades. Although minimum ages of clades are given by the oldest preserved fossil, these underestimate the true age, which must be bracketed by probabilistic methods based on multiple fossil occurrences. Although most of these methods assume uniform preservation rates, this assumption is unsupported over geological timescales. On geologically long timescales (more than 10 Myr), the origin and cessation of sedimentary basins, and… Show more

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...
2
1
1

Citation Types

0
83
0

Year Published

2017
2017
2024
2024

Publication Types

Select...
6
3
1

Relationship

1
9

Authors

Journals

citations
Cited by 88 publications
(86 citation statements)
references
References 96 publications
(151 reference statements)
0
83
0
Order By: Relevance
“…Finally, younger fossils are more similar to modern groups and are more likely to have been identified correctly. Holland (2016) discussed 'the pull of the recent', whereby the quality of the fossil record declines with geological age. He concluded: "Although minimum ages of clades are given by the oldest preserved fossil, these underestimate the true age, which must be bracketed by probabilistic methods… Although most of these methods assume uniform preservation rates, this assumption is unsupported over geological timescales…".…”
Section: Chronological Analysismentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Finally, younger fossils are more similar to modern groups and are more likely to have been identified correctly. Holland (2016) discussed 'the pull of the recent', whereby the quality of the fossil record declines with geological age. He concluded: "Although minimum ages of clades are given by the oldest preserved fossil, these underestimate the true age, which must be bracketed by probabilistic methods… Although most of these methods assume uniform preservation rates, this assumption is unsupported over geological timescales…".…”
Section: Chronological Analysismentioning
confidence: 99%
“…That structure imposes a lower limit on what we can resolve and therefore what processes we can study. On longer time scales, sequence stratigraphic architecture is the main control on the occurrence of fossils (Holland, 2000), and on even longer time scales, basin formation is what matters most (Holland, 2016). Knowing this structure will let us frame problems that we can test.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This is a relevant issue since the spatial heterogeneity in sampling is among the most pervasive biases of fossil data and might bias macroevolutionary analyses (e.g. Sepkoski ; Holland ; Close et al . ).…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%