Re: Fossil record gaps not a major issue

On 8/29/2024 7:46 PM, Pro Plyd wrote:

 https://phys.org/news/2024-08-darwin-unjustified-fossil-gaps-major.html
 Darwin's fear was unjustified: Study suggests
fossil record gaps not a major issue
 

SNIP:
The simulation described in the paper is not realistic and likely doesn't apply to terrestrial lifeforms.  Their conclusions likely are not valid.  Erosion is not the main reason that there are gaps in the fossil record.  You need deposition to occur in order for the fossils to be created, and deposition has to occur in the correct soils.  The greatest species diversity occurs in equatorial rain forests, but those forest soils dissolve bone.  So you have to exist in a place that can produce fossils where deposition and not erosion is occurring.  This means that not all species have the same chance of being preserved, and that their preservation is not going to be evenly distributed over the landscape.  Gaps are not just due to patches of fossil deposits getting erroded away.
Look at the whale example.  We have a strip of coastline where coastal errosion and deposition were occurring from time to time, and some sediments contained fossils of animals that lived along that coast when those sediments were being deposited.  It isn't a continuous record at any one place.  Those sediments were uplifted by India crashing into Asia, and erosion has exposed some of the fossils.  All the species that evolved along the rest of the coast line are not avaliable for study.
Ron Okimoto