Replaying evolutionary transitions from the dental fossil record

THE QUALITY OF THE FOSSIL RECORD: Implications for Evolutionary Analyses

■ Abstract Advances in taphonomy and stratigraphy over the past two decades have dramatically improved our understanding of the causes, effects, and remedies of incompleteness in the fossil record for the study of evolution. Taphonomic research has focused on quantifying probabilities of preservation across taxonomic groups, the temporal and spatial resolution of fossil deposits, and secular ch...

Estimating diversification rates from the fossil record

Diversification rates are estimated from phylogenies, typically without fossils, except in paleontological studies. By nature, rate estimations depend heavily on the time data provided in phylogenies, which are divergence times and (when used) fossil ages. Among these temporal data, fossil ages are by far the most precisely known (divergence times are inferences calibrated with fossils). We pro...

Fossil embryos deep in the fossil record

Embryos have been found in ‘old’ rocks on four continents, especially in Siberia, Nevada, Australia and China. They have been discovered in sedimentary rocks of even Late Neoproterozoic age, assuming the evolutionary geological column1 (figure 1). The Neoproterozoic is the period, so called, between 1 billion and 550 million years ago. This discovery was in the Doushantuo Formation, Guizhou Pro...

The Primate Fossil Record

Discriminating signal from noise in the fossil record of early vertebrates reveals cryptic evolutionary history

The fossil record of early vertebrates has been influential in elucidating the evolutionary assembly of the gnathostome bodyplan. Understanding of the timing and tempo of vertebrate innovations remains, however, mired in a literal reading of the fossil record. Early jawless vertebrates (ostracoderms) exhibit restriction to shallow-water environments. The distribution of their stratigraphic occu...