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The Fossil Record

The Fossil Record

The fossil record documents only a small fraction of all organisms that have ever inhabited Earth. Fossilization is a rare process, and most organisms never become fossils. Moreover, the fossil record only exhibits fossils that have been discovered. Nevertheless, sedimentary rock fossils of long-lived, abundant, hard-bodied organisms dominate the fossil record. These fossils offer valuable information, such as an organism's physical form, behavior, and age. Studying the fossil record helps...

What is Evolutionary History?

What is Evolutionary History?

Scientists record evolutionary history by analyzing fossil, morphological, and genetic data. The fossil record documents the history of life on Earth and provides evidence for evolution. However, both fossil and living organisms offer evidence that outlines Earth’s evolutionary history.

Phylogenetic Trees

Phylogenetic Trees

Phylogenetic trees come in many forms. It matters in which sequence the organisms are arranged from the bottom to the top of the tree, but the branches can rotate at their nodes without altering the information. The lines connecting individual nodes can be straight, angled, or even curved.

Phylogenetic Trees

Phylogenetic Trees

Phylogenetic trees come in many forms. It matters in which sequence the organisms are arranged from the bottom to the top of the tree, but the branches can rotate at their nodes without altering the information. The lines connecting individual nodes can be straight, angled, or even curved.

The Evidence for Evolution

The Evidence for Evolution

Genetic variations accumulating within populations over generations give rise to biological evolution. Evolutionary changes can result in the formation of novel varieties and entire new species. These changes are responsible for the diverse forms of life inhabiting the planet. The evidence for evolution suggests that all living organisms descended from common ancestors.

Phylogeny

Phylogeny

Phylogeny is concerned with the evolutionary diversification of organisms or groups of organisms. A group of organisms with a name is called a taxon (singular). Taxa (plural) can span different levels of the evolutionary hierarchy. For instance, the group containing all birds is a taxon (comprising the class Aves), and the group of all species of daisies (the genus Bellis) is a taxon. Phylogenies can likewise include just one genus (i.e., depict species relationships) or span an entire kingdom.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 8, 2026

Using Archival Japanese Paper and Thermoplastic Resins to Prepare Fossils for Storage, Display, Transport, and Radiography

Using Archival Japanese Paper and Thermoplastic Resins to Prepare Fossils for Storage, Display, Transport, and Radiography

Published on: November 14, 2025

Fossilization causes organisms to appear erroneously primitive by distorting evolutionary trees.

Robert S Sansom¹, Matthew A Wills

¹1] Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PT, UK [2] Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK.

Scientific Reports

|August 30, 2013

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Fossil preservation biases distort evolutionary trees. Removing soft-tissue data causes extinct species to appear older than they are, potentially inflating molecular evolutionary rates.

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Using Phylogenetic Analysis to Investigate Eukaryotic Gene Origin

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Last Updated: May 8, 2026

Using Archival Japanese Paper and Thermoplastic Resins to Prepare Fossils for Storage, Display, Transport, and Radiography

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Published on: November 14, 2025

Reconstructing Terrestrial Paleoclimate and Paleoecology with Fossil Leaves Using Digital Leaf Physiognomy and Leaf Mass Per Area

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Using Phylogenetic Analysis to Investigate Eukaryotic Gene Origin

Using Phylogenetic Analysis to Investigate Eukaryotic Gene Origin

Published on: August 14, 2018

Area of Science:

Paleontology
Evolutionary Biology
Phylogenetics

Background:

Fossils are crucial for dating molecular and morphological changes and understanding macroevolutionary transitions.
Accurate phylogenetic placement of extinct organisms is essential for many evolutionary studies.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how the fossil record's inherent bias towards preserving hard skeletal morphology affects phylogenetic analyses.
To quantify the impact of soft-part character removal on phylogenetic signal and evolutionary rate estimations.

Main Methods:

Systematically removed soft-part characters from 78 modern vertebrate and invertebrate morphological datasets.
Analyzed changes in phylogenetic signal and taxon placement after character removal.

Main Results:

Removal of soft-part characters significantly altered phylogenetic signal across datasets.
Taxa consistently shifted towards the root of their respective phylogenetic trees, appearing more primitive.
This 'stem-ward slippage' is a direct consequence of taphonomic biases in fossil preservation.

Conclusions:

The fossil record's preservation bias systematically distorts phylogenetic reconstructions.
This distortion can lead to the misinterpretation of fossil ages and inflate inferred evolutionary rates.
Stem-ward slippage is a ubiquitous challenge for macroevolutionary studies relying on fossil data.