Spatial bias in the marine fossil record

Area of Science:

• Paleontology
• Biodiversity Science
• Geology

Background:

• Global biodiversity inference is challenged by sampling biases in fossil records.
• Previous studies often overlook paleobiogeography, a crucial element in understanding ancient diversity.
• Correlations between richness and sampling intensity are common in paleontological data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate global marine fossil richness patterns.
• To differentiate true biological patterns from sampling artifacts.
• To assess the impact of paleobiogeography on diversity estimations.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 481,613 marine fossils from the Phanerozoic.
• Focusing on occurrence records from two paleolatitudinal bands to mitigate spatial sampling bias.
• Applying corrections for sampling bias to analyze diversity patterns.

Main Results:

• Empirical spatial patterns of richness are predominantly determined by fossil locality and sampling intensity.
• After bias correction, two distinct paleolatitudinal bands exhibit similar richness patterns.
• This suggests that sampling bias obscures underlying biological diversity signals.

Conclusions:

• Long-term diversity trends are linked to large-scale tectonic evolution.
• Short-term diversity trends appear to be region-specific.
• Future paleodiversity studies should focus on well-sampled regions to reveal non-sampling-driven patterns.