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Measuring relative abundance in fossil and living assemblages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

Geerat J. Vermeij  and
Gregory S. Herbert
Geerat J. Vermeij
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of California at Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616. E-mail: [email protected], E-mail: [email protected]
Gregory S. Herbert
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of California at Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616. E-mail: [email protected], E-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

Paleontologists increasingly appreciate the importance of studying the ecological context of fossil species and communities. Measuring abundance is a vital component not just for describing this context, but also for evaluating biases related to preservation and sampling and for estimating species richness (Jackson et al. 1999; Jackson and Johnson 2001; Kidwell 2001). Our purpose here is to identify a previously unrecognized problem that could lead to incorrect interpretation of observed patterns of abundance.

Type
Matters of the Record
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Winter 2004 , pp. 1 - 4
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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