title: Disentangling rock record bias and common-cause from redundancy in the British fossil record.
abstract: The fossil record documents the history of life, but the reliability of that record has often been questioned. Spatiotemporal variability in sedimentary rock volume, sampling and research effort especially frustrates global-scale diversity reconstructions. Various proposals have been made to rectify palaeodiversity estimates using proxy measures for the availability and sampling of the rock record, but the validity of these approaches remains controversial. Targeting the rich fossil record of Great Britain as a highly detailed regional exemplar, our statistical analysis shows that marine outcrop area contains a signal useful for predicting changes in diversity, collections and formations, whereas terrestrial outcrop area contains a signal useful for predicting formations. In contrast, collection and formation counts are information redundant with fossil richness, characterized by symmetric, bidirectional information flow. If this is true, the widespread use of collection and formation counts as sampling proxies to correct the raw palaeodiversity data may be unwarranted.
authors.affiliation: 1] Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK [2] School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queen's Road, Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK [3] Present address: School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK.
authors.forename: Alexander M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Dunhill
authors.affiliation: Centre for Geobiology, Department of Earth Science, University of Bergen, Allegaten 41, N-5007 Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Bjarte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hannisdal
authors.affiliation: School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queen's Road, Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Benton