The Adequacy of the Fossil Record [Hardcover]

Stephen K. Donovan (Editor), Christopher R. C. Paul (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471969885 | ISBN-13: 978-0471969884 | Publication Date: August 10, 1998 | Edition: 1

The Adequacy of the Fossil Record The ‘incompleteness of the fossil record’ is an excuse used by some scientists to reject any fossil evidence that runs counter to current preconceptions. In The Origin of Species, Darwin argued that the record must be very incomplete (and, by inference, very inadequate) as it did not appear to provide appropriate evidence to test his theory. Adequacy and completeness are difficult concepts that should not be confused. The fossil record may be incomplete, but it is entirely adequate for many and most requirements of palaeontology, as well as answering wider questions in geology and biology. The fossil record obviously does not preserve every organism of every species, perhaps not even a member of every major group. It only retains a sample that is biased in many ways, although we can often identify the nature of these influences. The Adequacy of the Fossil Record is intended to be an up-to-date review that seeks to debunk these and other objections. Thus, the first eight chapters are concerned largely with the broader issues of theory and interpretation. These are followed by four Contributions that discuss particular fossil groups that have been specifically chosen to illustrate how the concepts of completeness and adequacy are influenced by intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Earth Sciences

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Contributors: Michael J. Benton, Martin A. Buzas, Alan H. Cheetham, Stephen J. Culver, H. Allen Curran, Stephen K. Donovan, Benjamin J. Greenstein, Elizabeth M. Harper, Jeremy B. C. Jackson, Carl F. Koch, Charles R. Marshall, David M. Martill, John M. Pandolfi, Christopher R. C. Paul, Gregory J. Retallack, Peter J. Wagner Other titles of interest: Mass Extinctions: Processes and Evidence Stephen K. Donovan The Processes of Fossilization Stephen K. Donovan The Palaeobiology of Trace Fossils Stephen K. Donovan Evolutionary Change and Heterochrony K. J. McNamara Evolution Revolution K. J. McNamara and J. A. Long

About the Author

Stephen K. Donovan is Professor in the Department of Geography and Geology, at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. Christopher R. C. Paul is Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Liverpool.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 322 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 1 edition (August 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471969885
• ISBN-13: 978-0471969884
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,290,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Adequacy of the Fossil Record, March 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Adequacy of the Fossil Record (Hardcover)

The Adequacy of the Fossil Record is not what I was expecting. The underlying theme deals with the "interplay between the use of quantitative methods, and geological and paleontological intuition". I was thinking that it would be aimed at a general audience. The intended audience, however, is the professional.

The essays deal with a variety of issues; most are very technical. Several involve the statistical means used to estimate things like the completeness of the overall fossil record (or a specific fossil record) and the accuracy of dating species formation and extinction. The underlying statistical methodologies are examined for usefulness and correctness.

Taphonomy is the main subject of a few essays and an interwoven thread throughout most of book. Phosphatization (the second best method of fossilization to amber preservation), for example, is the focus of one essay.

The Adequacy of the Fossil Record will be of much use to professionals and researchers in the field of paleontology. The quantitative methods exemplified and discussed are essential to thorough analysis in this area that is too frequently considered a 'soft science' or a field where personal opinions get in the way of the actual statistical evidence. -- rpcman...

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disregard review of June 2, 2001, September 6, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Adequacy of the Fossil Record (Hardcover)

Despite any opinions you have on evolution/creationism, the prior review by "A reader" from June 2, 2001 is completely inappropriate and useless. This person seems bent on spreading their personal agenda. Indeed, I doubt they have even laid eyes upon this book. As one looking for a review of the book, I find it astounding that someone would resort to this tactic to spread their poisonous rhetoric. A book on taphonomy, has no bearing on such a debate.

On a personal note, I find it horribly dishonest to take quotes of these different scientists out of context. Stephen Jay Gould has railed against the Creationist agenda for years, yet you make him seem like a creationist! Furthermore, quoting a personal letter in public without the author's consent is simply disrespectful and dishonorable. Finally, if one would read the primary literature, one would see that there are excellent examples of evolution. They may not show gradualism (although some do), but there are certainly transitional forms.

As I state above, please disregard the prior review as it has no bearing on the book, and is an underhanded attempt to spread a NON-SCIENTIFIC agenda.

2 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where did all the transitional forms go?, June 2, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Adequacy of the Fossil Record (Hardcover)

This book is like many others. Bold claims combined with assumption upon assumption, mixed with pure conjecture and lots of just-so story telling. We've all heard the confident claims about "multitudes" of transitional forms in the fossil record, but what have evolutionary paleontologists been forced to admit? Are there any transitional forms at all?

"... I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?

I wrote the text of my book four years ago. If I were to write it now, I think the book would be rather different. Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least `show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.' I will lay it on the line-there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." --Personal letter (written 10 April 1979) from Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History in London, to Luther D. Sunderland; as quoted in "Darwin's Enigma" by Luther D. Sunderland, Master Books, San Diego, USA, 1984, p. 89.

"I know that, at least in paleoanthropology, data are still so sparse that theory heavily influences interpretations. Theories have, in the past, clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data." --Dr. David Pilbeam (Physical Anthropologist, Yale University, USA), "Rearranging our family tree". "Human Nature", June 1978, p. 45.

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." --Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" "Paleobiology", vol. 6 (1), January 1980, p. 127.

"All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt." --Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "The return of hopeful monsters". "Natural History", vol. LXXXVI (6), June-July 1977, p. 24.

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:

"The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps. He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory."

Darwin's argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never `seen' in the rocks.

Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study." --Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Evolution's erratic pace". "Natural History", vol. LXXXVI (5), May 1977, p. 14.

So how important is the fossil record to the evolutionist?

In 1960 the point was still being made...

"Although the comparative study of living animals and plants may give very convincing circumstantial evidence, fossils provide the only historical, documentary evidence that life has evolved from simpler to more and more complex forms." --Carl O. Dunbar, Ph.D. (geology) (Professor Emeritus of Paleontology and Stratigraphy, Yale University, and formerly Assistant Editor, "American Journal of Science") in "Historical Geology", John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1960, p. 47.

But more than 20 years later, after concerted creationist exposure of the true nature of the fossil record...

"In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." --Mark Ridley (zoologist, Oxford University), "Who doubts evolution?" "New Scientist", vol. 90, 25 June 1981, p. 831.

"Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact." --Dr. T. N. Tahmisian (Atomic Energy Commission, USA) in "The Fresno Bee", August 20, 1959. As quoted by N.J. Mitchell, "Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes", Roydon publications, UK, 1983, title page.

Books I also strongly recommend reading are: "Bones of Contention" by Marvin Lubenow, "Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!" by Duane Gish, "Icons of Evolution" by Jonathan Wells and "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe.