How reliable is the fossil record?

_{Denyse O'Leary

September 5, 2014

Evolution, Intelligent Design, News}

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The results show that out of all the geological factors, only the area of preserved rock drives biodiversity. Therefore, the other geological factors – counts of fossil collections and geological formations – are not independent measures of bias in the fossil record.

Co-author, Bjarte Hannisdal from the University of Bergen, said: “We can learn more by analysing old data in new ways, than by analysing new data in old ways.”

This discovery fundamentally alters the way we view the diversity of life through time. It shows that both the preservation of rock and the preservation of fossils were probably driven by external environmental factors like climate change and sea level. This better explains the similarities between the rock and fossil records, as both responding to the same external factors. The alternative idea, that rock preservation was driving the fossil record is now strongly queried by this study. Perhaps the record of biodiversity in the fossil record is more accurate than previously feared.

Professor Michael Benton from the University of Bristol, another co-author of the study, said: “Palaeontologists are right to be cautious about the quality of the fossil record, but perhaps some have been too cautious. The sequence of fossils in the rocks more or less tells us the story of the history of life, and we have sensible ways of dealing with uncertainty. Some recent work on ‘correcting’ the fossil record by using formation counts may produce nonsense results.”

Here’s the abstract:

The fossil record documents the history of life, but the reliability of that record has often been questioned. Spatiotemporal variability in sedimentary rock volume, sampling and research effort especially frustrates global-scale diversity reconstructions. Various proposals have been made to rectify palaeodiversity estimates using proxy measures for the availability and sampling of the rock record, but the validity of these approaches remains controversial. Targeting the rich fossil record of Great Britain as a highly detailed regional exemplar, our statistical analysis shows that marine outcrop area contains a signal useful for predicting changes in diversity, collections and formations, whereas terrestrial outcrop area contains a signal useful for predicting formations. In contrast, collection and formation counts are information redundant with fossil richness, characterized by symmetric, bidirectional information flow. If this is true, the widespread use of collection and formation counts as sampling proxies to correct the raw palaeodiversity data may be unwarranted. (paywall)

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Comments

tkeithlu noted
A good example is the nearly total lack of a fossil record we’d love to have – the chimp and bonobo ancestors since the hominid split. The soil conditions just were not right for fossils to form.
And how do we know that the soil conditions were not right? It's not depending on the lack of fossils is it? If it is, we'd have a circular argument. "This is a painting of a cow eating grass." "Where's the grass?" "The cow has eaten it." "And where's the cow?" "There was no more grass, so it left." -QQuerius_{September 9, 2014
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Fossils really are very rare - if you want fossils from a certain era you have to go to one of the few places in the world that have broken sedimentary strata at the surface that happens to have caught critters without their being chemically destroyed or scattered by scavengers. Rare indeed. A good example is the nearly total lack of a fossil record we'd love to have - the chimp and bonobo ancestors since the hominid split. The soil conditions just were not right for fossils to form. This chain of comments would be stronger if the references were not so often from sources such as Evolution News, which seems dedicated to a particular point of view.tkeithlu_{September 9, 2014
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So, to the original question, the fossil record is very reliable. It's the interpretations that are questionable. That Darwinists can rationalize why the mantis shrimp has remained relatively unchanged for 400 million years, especially considering that the creature has the most advanced eyesight on the planet, is not a poor reflection on the fossil record, but a demonstration of the laughable inadequacy of Darwinism, not to mention the gullibility of its defenders. -QQuerius_{September 7, 2014
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DavidD, this may interest you:, it turns out that fossil animals that look exactly like modern animals are often given a different name,,, Living Fossils Interview with Dr. Carl Werner – video (13:38 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6LmWznY4Ys&feature=player_detailpage#t=807 Living Fossils - Dr. Carl Werner, part 2 of 2 | Origins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noljXQOW9qAbornagain77_{September 6, 2014
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Sometimes i wonder how many of the seas creature fossils may still be creatures which exist today at very deep depths. This was taken in Florida of a type of Manta Shrimp which looks very much like some of the animations of sea creatures even referenced at U.D. which existed around the Cambrian explosion time. Anyway, just interesting, take a look: http://spacecoastdaily.com/2014/09/rare-crustacean-caught-in-ft-pierce/ -DavidD_{September 6, 2014
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Yes. I was also taught that fossil formation was "very rare," but now I understand that there are about a billion of them known. The whole notion that some fish died, and sank to the bottom of a shallow sea to slowly fossilize over millions of years without being destroyed by scavangers and bacteria now seems ludicrous to me. Ever own an aquarium with an ex-goldfish in it? And then there were all these convenient mudslides all over that miraculously buried schools and colonies of organisms in situ . . . Nah. -QQuerius_{September 5, 2014
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We're lucky to have any fossils at all. How many dead things get fossilized today? They usually either deteriorate or are eaten shortly after death. Why do we have fossilized footprints? What caused mud to become rock? Usually a hard rain causes footprints in mud to disappear immediately. One can only assume that something cataclysmic happened to preserve the remains and footprints.mjazzguitar_{September 5, 2014
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As to the fossil record in general, the most famous incongruence with Darwin's predicted tree of life is, or course, the Cambrian Explosion,,, Charles Darwin himself put the problem with the fossil record at the Canbrian like this,,,
"Consequently, if the theory be true, it is indisputable that, before the lowest Silurian or Cambrian stratum was deposited long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Cambrian age to the present day; and that during these vast periods the world swarmed with living creatures… To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods, I can give no satisfactory answer… The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained." —Chapter IX, “On the Imperfection of the Geological Record,” On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin - fifth edition (1869), pp. 378-381.
,,, Hence 'Darwin's Doubt',,, Charles Darwin hoped that future discoveries would alleviate the problem that the Cambrian Explosion presented for his theory, but 150 plus years on the problem has only become more acute for Darwin's theory,,,
“The Cambrian Explosion occurred in a geological moment, and we have reason to think that all major anatomical designs may have made their evolutionary appearance at that time. …not only the phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major divisions, arose within the Cambrian Explosion…. Contrary to Darwin’s expectation that new data would reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness and geological abruptness of this formative event…” (Gould, Nature, Vol.377, 26 10/95, p.682). "Over the past 150 years or so, paleontologists have found many representatives of the phyla that were well-known in Darwin’s time (by analogy, the equivalent of the three primary colors) and a few completely new forms altogether (by analogy, some other distinct colors such as green and orange, perhaps). And, of course, within these phyla, there is a great deal of variety. Nevertheless, the analogy holds at least insofar as the differences in form between any member of one phylum and any member of another phylum are vast, and paleontologists have utterly failed to find forms that would fill these yawning chasms in what biotechnologists call “morphological space.” In other words, they have failed to find the paleolontogical equivalent of the numerous finely graded intermediate colors (Oedleton blue, dusty rose, gun barrel gray, magenta, etc.) that interior designers covet. Instead, extensive sampling of the fossil record has confirmed a strikingly discontinuous pattern in which representatives of the major phyla stand in stark isolation from members of other phyla, without intermediate forms filling the intervening morphological space." Stephen Meyer - Darwin’s Doubt (p. 70) “It is hard for us paleontologists, steeped as we are in a tradition of Darwinian analysis, to admit that neo-Darwinian explanations for the Cambrian explosion have failed miserably. New data acquired in recent years, instead of solving Darwin’s dilemma, have rather made it worse. Meyer describes the dimensions of the problem with clarity and precision. His book is a game changer for the study of evolution and points us in the right direction as we seek a new theory for the origin of animals.” -Dr. Mark McMenamin - 2013 Paleontologist at Mt. Holyoke College and author of The Emergence of Animals “The Cambrian Explosion occurred in a geological moment, and we have reason to think that all major anatomical designs may have made their evolutionary appearance at that time. …not only the phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major divisions, arose within the Cambrian Explosion…. Contrary to Darwin’s expectation that new data would reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness and geological abruptness of this formative event…” (Gould, Nature, Vol.377, 26 10/95, p.682). “If we were to expect to find ancestors to or intermediates between higher taxa, it would be the rocks of the late Precambrian to Ordivician times, when the bulk of the world’s higher animal taxa evolved. Yet traditional alliances are unknown or unconfirmed for any of the phyla or classes appearing then.” (Valentine, Development As An Evolutionary Process, p.84, 1987) Does Lots of Sediment in the Ocean Solve the "Mystery" of the Cambrian Explosion? - Casey Luskin April, 2012 Excerpt: I think the Cambrian fossil record is surprisingly complete. I think it may be more complete than we realize. The reason for that is, for instance, if you look at the stratigraphy of the world, if I go and collect Cambrian rocks in Wales and find certain fossils, if I then go to China, I don't find the same species but I find the same sorts of fossils. If I go into Carboniferous rocks, I go to Canada, they are the same as what I find in this country. So there is a clear set of faunas and floras that take us through geological time. The overall framework is falling into position. - Simon Conway Morris http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/04/lots_of_sedimen059021.html The Ham-Nye Creation Debate: A Huge Missed Opportunity - Casey Luskin - February 4, 2014 Excerpt: "The record of the first appearance of living phyla, classes, and orders can best be described in Wright's (1) term as 'from the top down'." (James W. Valentine, "Late Precambrian bilaterians: Grades and clades," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 91: 6751-6757 (July 1994).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/02/the_ham-nye_deb081911.html “Darwin had a lot of trouble with the fossil record because if you look at the record of phyla in the rocks as fossils why when they first appear we already see them all. The phyla are fully formed. It’s as if the phyla were created first and they were modified into classes and we see that the number of classes peak later than the number of phyla and the number of orders peak later than that. So it’s kind of a top down succession, you start with this basic body plans, the phyla, and you diversify them into classes, the major sub-divisions of the phyla, and these into orders and so on. So the fossil record is kind of backwards from what you would expect from in that sense from what you would expect from Darwin’s ideas." James W. Valentine - On the Origin of Phyla: Interviews with James W. Valentine
There simply isn't any evidence in the fossil record indicating that single cells ever formed anything more than 'simple aggregates':
"We go from single cell protozoa. which would be ameoba and things like that. Then you get into some that are a little bit bigger, still single cell, and then you get aggregates, they're still individual cells that aggregate together. They don't seem to have much in the way of cooperation,,, but when you really talk about a functioning organism, that has more than just one type of cell, you are talking about a sponge and you can have hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of cells. So we don't really have organisms that function with say two different types of cells, but there is only five total. We don't have anything like that." - Dr. Raymond G. Bohlin - quote taken from 31:00 minute mark of this following video Natural Limits to Biological Change 2/2 - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo3OKSGeFRQ Dr. Stephen Meyer: Darwin's Dilemma - The Significance of Sponge Embryos - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPs8E7y0ySs
also of note: The Cambrian Explosion is not the only place where 'top down' appearance of organisms occurs:
Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head - July 30, 2013 Excerpt: evolutionary biologists,,, looked at nearly one hundred fossil groups to test the notion that it takes groups of animals many millions of years to reach their maximum diversity of form. Contrary to popular belief, not all animal groups continued to evolve fundamentally new morphologies through time. The majority actually achieved their greatest diversity of form (disparity) relatively early in their histories. ,,,Dr Matthew Wills said: "This pattern, known as 'early high disparity', turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. What is equally surprising in our findings is that groups of animals are likely to show early-high disparity regardless of when they originated over the last half a billion years. This isn't a phenomenon particularly associated with the first radiation of animals (in the Cambrian Explosion), or periods in the immediate wake of mass extinctions.",,, Author Martin Hughes, continued: "Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on. Co-author Dr Sylvain Gerber, added: "A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html
bornagain77_{September 5, 2014
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Co-author, Bjarte Hannisdal from the University of Bergen, said: “We can learn more by analysing old data in new ways, than by analysing new data in old ways.”
There is definitely much truth in this statement. I had a palaeontology prof who made his scientific reputation as the result of being lazy when he was younger. As an undergraduate student he was assigned to conduct a detailed examination of the composition of a native shell midden. But being lazy, he never bothered to read the existing literature on the site. In fact, he was not even aware that the prevailing thought of the day was that it was a shell midden. All he knew was that it was an ancient pile of shells. He conducted a thorough morphological characterization of the shells in the midden. What he noticed was that the midden appeared to be composed of only the left valve of a single species of bivalve. His conclusion was that it was the result of the natural sorting abilities of material being carried by moving water. At first, the supervising professor was not happy that the student had completely misunderstood the purpose of the study. But when he examined the data carefully, the evidence was so conclusive that he couldn't deny it.Acartia_bogart_{September 5, 2014
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