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Variable preservation potential and richness in the fossil record of vertebrates
Palaeontology ( IF 2.6 ) Pub Date : 2020-03-01 , DOI: 10.1111/pala.12458 Fiona M. Walker 1 , Alexander M. Dunhill 2 , Michael J. Benton 1
Palaeontology ( IF 2.6 ) Pub Date : 2020-03-01 , DOI: 10.1111/pala.12458 Fiona M. Walker 1 , Alexander M. Dunhill 2 , Michael J. Benton 1
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Variation in preservation and sampling probability clouds our estimates of past biodiversity. The most extreme examples are Lagerst€atten faunas and floras. Although such deposits provide a wealth of information and represent true richness better than other deposits, they can create misleading diversity peaks because of their species richness. Here, we investigate how Lagerst€atten formations add to time series of vertebrate richness in the UK, Germany and China. The first two nations are associated with wellstudied fossil records and the last is a country where palaeontology has a much shorter history; all three nations include noted Lagerst€atten in their fossil records. Lagerst€atten provide a larger proportion of China’s sampled richness than in Germany or the UK, despite comprising a smaller proportion of its fossiliferous deposits. The proportions of taxa that are unique to Lagerst€atten vary through time and between countries. Further, in all regions, we find little overlap between the taxa occurring in Lagerst€atten and in ‘ordinary’ formations within the same time bin, indicating that Lagerst€atten preserve unusual faunas. As expected, fragile taxa make up a greater proportion of richness in Lagerst€atten than the remainder of the fossil record. Surprisingly, we find that Lagerst€atten account for a minority of peaks in the palaeodiversity curves of all vertebrates (18% in the UK; 36% in Germany and China), and Lagerst€atten count is generally not a good overall predictor of the palaeodiversity signal. Vastly different sampling probabilities through taxa, locations and time require serious consideration when analysing palaeodiversity curves.
更新日期：2020-03-01
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