Incomplete fossil record may not be a big problem.

Pinball1970

Pinball1970

Valued Senior Member
Article here. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-darwin-unjustified-fossil-gaps-major.html

The general gist of the study.

" a team of sedimentologists and stratigraphers from the Netherlands and the UK have examined how this incompleteness influences the reconstruction of evolutionary history. To their surprise, they found that the incompleteness itself is actually not such a big issue.

"It's as if you are missing half of a movie. If you are missing the second half, you can't understand the story, but if you are missing every second frame, you can still follow the plot without problems."

Paper here, https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-024-02287-2
 
There's this thing called "Logical Progression". Robust features, such as having four legs, are retained and maybe improved, while non-critical features, like having red hair, may be lost.
 
Pinball1970 said:
Article here. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-darwin-unjustified-fossil-gaps-major.html

The general gist of the study.

" a team of sedimentologists and stratigraphers from the Netherlands and the UK have examined how this incompleteness influences the reconstruction of evolutionary history. To their surprise, they found that the incompleteness itself is actually not such a big issue.

"It's as if you are missing half of a movie. If you are missing the second half, you can't understand the story, but if you are missing every second frame, you can still follow the plot without problems."

Paper here, https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12862-024-02287-2
Click to expand...
They complain that we don't have a seamless fossil record. If we did have one they'd say "that's fishy, how did all those fossils get saved?" [sigh]

I visited a storefront creation museum near Springfield, IL, during Skepticon III. They said "It's impossible for fecal matter to be fossilized." I pointed out that a buried item can experience mineral replacement in any number of ways. The speaker clearly didn't listen.
 
Ken Fabian said:
Not sure why they would be surprised.
Click to expand...

Gawdzilla Sama said:
They complain that we don't have a seamless fossil record. If we did have one they'd say "that's fishy, how did all those fossils get saved?" [sigh]

I visited a storefront creation museum near Springfield, IL, during Skepticon III. They said "It's impossible for fecal matter to be fossilized." I pointed out that a buried item can experience mineral replacement in any number of ways. The speaker clearly didn't listen.
Click to expand...
Shubin summed it up pretty well. A fraction of species are fossilized and a fraction of those are found.

The thinking was that species are obviously lost forever due to extinction, estimate is about 99.9% of every species that ever lived. So we will only ever find about their history from the descendants, extant cousins and what we can find in the fossil record.
This paper suggests they just need some data points and they can join the dots.
I thought I could scan read the paper (no) so I will do a deep dive.
 
The guy at the Creation "Museum" said there was no way for dung to be fossilized, it was rot away long before the process started. I replied that I had a pile of dung get buried by hot outflow from a geyser at Yellowstone. He mumbled.
 
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