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If I had to guess, the types of conditions that collect and preserve fossils well enough for us to discover them are transient in nature (as in, it became sudde
by beeboop 11y ago
If I had to guess, the types of conditions that collect and preserve fossils well enough for us to discover them are transient in nature (as in, it became suddenly covered by something like a landslide/water) or very geographically specific. This means there would be a bias towards whole-skeleton fossils during very specific time periods or very specific locations, rather than bits and pieces from thousands of different types all over the place.
Could be totally wrong though.
- marcus_holmes 11y agoThat makes sense. So we're not seeing a cross-section of the entire dinosaur era, we're just seeing a cross-section of the dinosaurs caught in the Burgess Shale, or whatever other specific circumstances caught the other examples. This would make sense if all the examples of any given species came from the same site. Is that true?