The ties linking rock and fossil records and why they are important for palaeobiodiversity studies

Abstract

A correlation exists between the quality of the rock record and the diversity of fossils recorded from that rock record but what drives that correlation, and how consistent that correlation is across different environments, remain to be determined. Palaeontologists wishing to investigate past diversity patterns need to first address issues of geological bias in their data.The fossil record provides the only empirical evidence of how life has diversified over geological time, but it needs to be interpreted with caution.

Extinctions in ancient and modern seas

“…Fossil records are not available for all regions of the modern ocean, and many areas are undersampled with respect to both modern and ancient marine biodiversity. Some ocean habitats, such as the deep sea for current, historical, and macrofossil species records [78,79], are also chronically undersampled. Moreover, preservation and sampling of the fossil record is not uniform [49,80], leaving some time intervals under-represented in existing databases.…”

Life’s a Gas: A Thermodynamic Theory of Biological Evolution

“…Geological filters impact upon preservation, the proportion of facies and the amount of rock available to sample [94]. Diagenesis, weathering and metamorphosis can all alter sedimentary rock and its fossilized contents.…”

Assessing sampling of the fossil record in a geographically and stratigraphically constrained dataset: the Chalk Group of Hampshire, southern UK

“…Three explanations have been suggested for this: (1) the four sampling biases previously listed are strongly distorting our estimates of past diversity, or the 'bias' model (Smith 2007;Benson & Mannion 2012;Lloyd 2012); (2) there is a third, unaccounted-for factor that is driving both the proxies used and palaeodiversity, or the 'common cause' model (Sepkoski 1976;Peters & Foote 2002;Peters 2005;Hannisdal & Peters 2011;Peters & Heim 2011); (3) some proxies are partially redundant with the fossil record (Benton et al 2011;Dunhill et al 2014a;Benton 2015). These three hypotheses have been discussed in detail elsewhere (Benton et al 2011;Smith & McGowan 2011). Researchers have generally used subsampling (shareholder quorum subsampling (SQS) of Alroy 2010a; Benson et al 2016) or sampling proxy modelling (Smith & McGowan 2007;Benson & Mannion 2012;Lloyd 2012;Benson et al 2016) to obtain 'samplingcorrected' relative diversity, although there has been some criticism of the use of both of these methods (Brocklehurst 2015;Hannisdal et al 2016).…”

“…However, there are many analytical and sampling issues to be considered before interpreting changes in diversity curves as evolutionary events (Smith & McGowan 2011). Some of these problems, such as the 'pull of the Recent' (Raup 1979), may be corrected for by excluding Recent taxon records (Jablonski et al 2003), or by using within-bin sampled occurrences rather than range-through data.…”

“…Some of these problems, such as the 'pull of the Recent' (Raup 1979), may be corrected for by excluding Recent taxon records (Jablonski et al 2003), or by using within-bin sampled occurrences rather than range-through data. However, variations in the sampling intensity of different time periods may influence apparent diversity patterns (Raup 1972;Smith & McGowan 2011). Sampling bias affecting fossil occurrence data can be split into four separate but interlinked categories: (1) facies heterogeneity (Holland 1995;Smith et al 2001;Smith & Benson 2013); (2) rock volume, differential deposition, preservation and survival of sediments through time (Holland 1995;Peters & Foote 2001;Smith & McGowan 2007;Smith & Benson 2013); (3) rock exposure area and accessibility (Dunhill 2011(Dunhill , 2012; (4) palaeontological sampling effort (the 'bonanza' effect of Raup 1977;Dunhill et al 2012Dunhill et al , 2013Dunhill et al , 2014b.…”