2025/08/01 by C. Henrik Woolley, David J. Bottjer, Nathan D. Smith · 2 voices · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Amphibian and Reptile Biology #Cladogram #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Fossil Record #Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology #Phylogenetic tree #Phylogenetics #Sampling (signal processing) #Taphonomy
paper · doi:10.1017/pab.2025.10060
published in Paleobiology 51(3), 554-573 (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2025/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract Fossil data are subject to inherent biological, geologic, and anthropogenic filters that can distort our interpretations of ancient life and environments. The inevitable presence of incomplete fossils thus requires a holistic assessment of how to navigate the downstream effects of bias on our ability to accurately reconstruct aspects of biology in deep time. In particular, we must assess how biases affect our capacity to infer evolutionary relationships, which are essential to analyses of diversification, paleobiogeography, and biostratigraphy in Earth history. In this study, we use an established completeness metric to quantify the effects of taphonomic filters on the amount of phylogenetic information available in the fossil record of 795 extinct squamate (e.g., lizards, snakes, amphisbaenians, and mosasaurs) species spanning 242 Myr of geologic time. This study found no meaningful relationship between spatiotemporal sampling intensity and fossil record completeness. Instead, major differences in squamate fossil record completeness stem from a combination of anatomy/body size and affinities of different squamate groups to specific lithologies and depositional environments. These results reveal that naturally occurring processes create structural megabiases that filter anatomical and phylogenetic data in the squamate fossil record, while anthropogenic processes play a secondary role.