Re: Adequacy of the Fossil Record

Glenn R. Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Wed, 07 Oct 1998 14:50:08 -0500

At 10:28 AM 10/7/98 -0700, Cliff Lundberg wrote:
>David J. Tyler wrote:
>
>> According to the book, the fossil record is not a bad representation
>> of past life forms. "...for example, in groups that leave easily
>> fossilised remains, such as mammals and molluscs, more than 60% of
>> species, 80% of genera and 90% of families have been discovered....
>
>I wonder how these stats were developed. My own view (that the early
>Cambrian was a time of wild experimentation in metazoan forms) would
>suggest that an imponderable number of family-level experiments in
>morphology were short-lived.

I know they don't apply to mammals. Only about 3 percent of all living
mammalian species have a fossil record. See my web page.
glenn

Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm