10.5061/DRYAD.RB86D
Dunhill, Alexander M.
University of Leeds
Hannisdal, Bjarte
University of Bergen
Brocklehurst, Neil
Museum für Naturkunde
Benton, Michael J.
University of Bristol
Data from: On formation-based sampling proxies and why they should not be
used to correct the fossil record
Dryad
dataset
2018
SAMPLING PROXY
RESIDUAL MODELLING
sampling bias
PALAEODIVERSITY
redundancy
2018-09-22T00:00:00Z
2018-09-22T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12331
43905989 bytes
1
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
The fossil record is a unique resource on the history of life, but it is
well known to be incomplete. In a series of high-profile papers, a
residual modelling technique has been applied to correct the raw
palaeodiversity signal for this bias and incompleteness, and the claim is
made that the processed time series are more accurate than the raw data.
We apply empirical and simulation approaches to test for correlation and
directionality of any relationships between rock and fossil data. The
empirical data comprise samples of the global fossil record through the
Phanerozoic, and we use simulations to assess whether randomly sampled
subsets of modelled data can be improved by application of the residual
modelling technique. Our results show that using formation counts as a
sampling proxy to correct the fossil record via residual modelling is ill
founded. The supposedly independent model of sampling is
information-redundant with respect to the raw palaeodiversity data it
seeks to correct, and so the outputs are generally likely to be further
from the truth than the raw data. We recommend that students of
palaeodiversity cease to use residual modelling estimates based on
formation counts, and suggest that results from a substantial number of
papers published in the past ten years require re-evaluation.
expanded_Supplementary dataSupplementary file of empirical data and
simulation resultsresidual_simulation_expandedSimulations R script