Journal of Paleontology, 91(6), 2017, p. 1315–1317 Copyright © 2017, The Paleontological Society 0022-3360/17/0088-0906 doi: 10.1017/jpa.2017.114


Presidential Address


Structure, not Bias Steven M. Holland Department of Geology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2501, USA ⟨stratum@uga.edu⟩


Steven M. Holland


Darwin’s Origin of Species, Chapter 9. We have all read it. It is the one where Darwin points out the poor quality of the fossil record, how it does not sufficiently support his ideas. Biologists have also read it. For most scientists, Darwin’s words are their most lasting impression of the fossil record. Compounding matters, we have underscored and emphasized Darwin’s point for the past 150 years by routinely highlighting incompleteness and bias. And if bias was not good enough at scaring off the biologists, we have added megabias. Through my career, I have considered the nature of the


fossil record, what we call bias, and how we respond to it. Tonight, I want to suggest that we take a different path. As a record of everything that has ever lived on earth, the fossil record is an imperfect and incomplete data set. We know


approached those data as we approach our own, we would find incompleteness and bias. Our exaggerated emphasis on the imper- fection of the fossil record feeds the perception among scientists in general that the fossil record is an unusually poor data set. It isn’t.


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this. However, all data sets are incomplete. For example, we often make a point in our classes about the rarity of fossilization, that only a tiny fraction of organisms that have lived are fossi- lized. This is true, but it is also true that only a tiny fraction of organisms alive today, much less over the history of earth, will ever be sequenced. We would never argue that all organisms or even that all species must be sequenced for molecular data to be useful. When we emphasize the rarity of fossilization, we hold the fossil record to an unfair standard. We could examine data sets frommany other fields, and if we


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