Quality of the fossil record through time

@article{Benton2000QualityOT,
  title={Quality of the fossil record through time},
  author={M. Benton and M. Wills and R. Hitchin},
  journal={Nature},
  year={2000},
  volume={403},
  pages={534-537}
}
Does the fossil record present a true picture of the history of life, or should it be viewed with caution? Raup argued that plots of the diversification of life were an illustration of bias: the older the rocks, the less we know. The debate was partially resolved by the observation that different data sets gave similar patterns of rising diversity through time. Here we show that new assessment methods, in which the order of fossils in the rocks (stratigraphy) is compared with the order inherent… Expand
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  • Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
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