Paleontology as a circumstantial evidence lawsuit

Ebbighausen, Rodion; Korn, Dieter

doi:10.1080/08912963.2012.688199

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…By contrast, the widespread adaptive interpretations of the ammonoid conch are ad hoc explanations in many cases, partially because their behavior cannot be observed (e.g., swimming speeds, habitat depths, vertical movements; compare Ritterbush et al 2014, Naglik et al 2015. This is a common problem in paleontology (Ebbighausen and Korn 2013), strongly limiting the range and number of falsifiable hypotheses. In some cases, iterative intricate evolutionary patterns or morphological characteristics allow speculations with a certain degree of plausibility, which justifies their description and discussion.…”

Section: Iterative Evolution and Evolutionary Jumpsmentioning

confidence: 90%

Evolutionary Patterns of Ammonoids: Phenotypic Trends, Convergence, and Parallel Evolution

Monnet

Klug

Baets

2015

Topics in Geobiology

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Section: Iterative Evolution and Evolutionary Jumpsmentioning

confidence: 90%

Evolutionary Patterns of Ammonoids: Phenotypic Trends, Convergence, and Parallel Evolution

Monnet

Klug

Baets

2015

Topics in Geobiology

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“…The reformulation Gould had in mind, however, concerned the entire paleontological discipline. He suggested a “nomothetic and idiographic” approach to the fossil record based upon David Raup and Sepkoski’s studies on the structure of the mass extinction [ 22 , 23 , 24 ].…”

Section: Paleobiology Vs Paleontologymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Plea for a New Synthesis: From Twentieth-Century Paleobiology to Twenty-First-Century Paleontology and Back Again

Tamborini

2022

Biology

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In this paper, I will briefly discuss the elements of novelty and continuity between twentieth-century paleobiology and twenty-first-century paleontology. First, I will outline the heated debate over the disciplinary status of paleontology in the mid-twentieth century. Second, I will analyze the main theoretical issue behind this debate by considering two prominent case studies within the broader paleobiology agenda. Third, I will turn to twenty-first century paleontology and address five representative research topics. In doing so, I will characterize twenty-first century paleontology as a science that strives for more data, more technology, and more integration. Finally, I will outline what twenty-first-century paleontology might inherit from twentieth-century paleobiology: the pursuit of and plea for a new synthesis that could lead to a second paleobiological revolution. Following in the footsteps of the paleobiological revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, the paleobiological revolution of the twenty-first century would enable paleontologists to gain strong political representation and argue with a decisive voice at the “high table” on issues such as the expanded evolutionary synthesis, the conservation of Earth’s environment, and global climate change.

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Paleontology: Outrunning Time

Huss

2017

Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science

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In this paper, I discuss several temporal aspects of paleontology from a philosophical perspective. I begin by presenting the general problem of "taming" deep time to make it comprehensible at a human scale, starting with the traditional geologic time scale: an event-based, relative time scale consisting of a hierarchy of chronological units. Not only does the relative timescale provide a basis for reconstructing many of the general features of the history of life, but it is also consonant with the cognitive processes humans use to think about time. Absolute dating of rocks, fossils, and evolutionary events (such as branching events on the tree of life) can be accomplished through the use of radiometric dating, chronological signals extractable from fossil growth patterns, and the "molecular clock." Sometimes these different methods of absolute dating, which start from largely independent assumptions and evidentiary bases, converge in their temporal estimates, resulting in a consilience of inductions. At other times they fail to agree, either because fossils and molecules are giving temporal information about different aspects of nature and should not be expected to agree, or because of flawed assumptions that give rise to an inaccurate estimate. I argue that in general, despite the fact that it can be difficult to integrate disparate kinds of evidence, the principle of total evidence should be applied to the dating of evolutionary events. As a historical science, paleontology studies past events we cannot observe directly. This raises questions of epistemic access, meaning that due to the fragmentary nature of the fossil record we may find ourselves without access to the relevant traces to adjudicate between rival hypotheses about the past. The problems and prospects of epistemic access are explored through a case study of the reconstruction of the colors of dinosaurs. The paper closes with a reflection on the DarwinLyell metaphor of the fossil record as a highly fragmentary history book, and a call for a reconsideration of the book metaphor in favor of a systems view of the geologic and fossil records.

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Paleontology as a circumstantial evidence lawsuit

Cited by 4 publications

References 51 publications

Evolutionary Patterns of Ammonoids: Phenotypic Trends, Convergence, and Parallel Evolution

Evolutionary Patterns of Ammonoids: Phenotypic Trends, Convergence, and Parallel Evolution

A Plea for a New Synthesis: From Twentieth-Century Paleobiology to Twenty-First-Century Paleontology and Back Again

Paleontology: Outrunning Time

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