Re: Mesonychids to Whales
AChadwick (chadwicka@swac.edu)
Tue, 27 Jun 1995 18:28:40 -6000 Russ wrote:
> The fossill "record" is evidense of death and burial of individuals and
> species, not the origin of a species nor birth of an idividual.
True, but the foundation stone of biostratigraphy is "first
appearance", which generally is taken to mean evolution of. The
possibility remains that a specimen may turn up at a lower
stratigraphic interval, negating the boundary. Generally the
distributions are well known in advance. This may not be true in
dealing with cetaceans, where the number of individuals available is
limited. If we are dealing with one or a few specimens, I think
biostratigraphy would be of questionable value in deciphering
ancestry.
Art