TREE-BASED APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING HISTORY - COMMENTS ON RANKS, RULES, AND THE QUALITY OF THE FOSSIL RECORD

How do we understand the history of life? Traditionally patterns of preservation have been used as direct indicators of taxic and faunal origin and demise. However, the fossil record is rife with inconsistencies, and patterns of fossil preservation, ordered superpositionally, give at best a crude (and sometimes even misleading) reflection of phylogentic relationship and faunal diversity. The application of phylogenetic systematics (cladistics) to patterns in the fossil record offers an alternative to the direct reading of life's history in the rocks. Paleontologic information can be integrated within this system and interpreted in a logical and consistent fashion. The results of such an approach is a new taxic and faunal history, one that is predicted by phylogeny and is to varying degrees incongruous with a direct reading of the fossil record.