fossil record

Dear readers, It has been far too long since my last post, occasioned by the fact that I have entirely too many irons in the fire. I hope you will forgive this brief “drive-by” post, with a request for some help and information. One of the common refrains that comes up regarding the fossil record, or regarding claims about biodiversity and the evolution of species more generally, is that the vast majority of species that have ever lived on the Earth have gone extinct. This is often phrased as “99% of species that have ever lived have gone extinct” or similar wording. (Occasionally someone will temper the number to 98% or 95% or some other nearby figure, but 99% seems Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Using the fossil record to accurately estimate the timing and pace of past mass extinctions is no easy task, and a new study highlights how fossil evidence can produce a misleading picture if not interpreted with care. Florida Museum of Natural History researchers used a series of 130-foot cores drilled from the Po Plain in northeastern Italy to test a thought experiment: Imagine catastrophe strikes the Adriatic Sea, swiftly wiping out modern marine life. Could this hypothetical mass extinction be reconstructed correctly from mollusks — hard-shelled animals such as oysters and mussels — preserved in these cores? When they examined the cores, the results were “somewhat unnerving,” said Michal Kowalewski, Thompson Chair of Invertebrate Paleontology and the study’s Read More ›