Let us consider a set of fossil occurrences of the same lineage in two separated geographic spaces (e. g., two landmasses, two hydrographic basins, two ocean basins).
Given such dataset, would it be possible to use the time intervals of fossil occurrences to calculate dispersal time estimates, or the earliest occurrence of the lineage in the geographic space to which it has dispersed? What would be the best method to use?
Hi,
such questions is common place in palaeontology. Should we do no hypotheses as they would rest on many assumptions? I do not think so.
As for this particular case I think that yes the dataset can be used to calculate dispersal times, as an hypothesis, as long as the limit of the dataset are clearly explained.
with regards
DearAndrew Paul McKenzie Pegman right
However, if there is a statistically comparable material and a large set of base, then I supportMarc Philippe
You can also try
Regards, Sergey Viktorovich Pushkin
Dear Jorge W. Moreno-Bernal
please find the following link, I hope helpful to you.
Article Fossil biogeography: A new model to infer dispersal, extinct...
Any method used to calculate dispersal times will have to have a large amount of data at different stratigraphic levels and the size of the taxon. If we limit ourselves to the data from the scientific literature, the numerous taxonomic gaps typical of paleontological science must be taken into account.
The simple fact is that in North and South America their have been at least 10glaciations, and very few if any of the big beasts became extinct.....until the period at the end of the latest one, and most of that between roughly 13 000 and 10000 years ago, with a few in remote areas to 6000 years ago. .
Human sites are rare and spotty until 13 000.... with the appearance of the much more advanced Clovis artifacts ...the picture changes.....almost ALL the big and intermediate cats disappeared...also in NAM panther sized , the mountain lions or cougars and jaguars crept back to NAM from SAM.....all the big boys, lions and tigeresque things like short tailed lions, sapertoothed and scymetered toothed lions went extinct along with st least four critter very much like modern cheetahs. Interesting aside, no cat originally in SAM until the isthmus of Panama opened up....there were lots of marsupials in SAm, including a sabertoothed variety.......which were no competition for the NAM lions and sabertoothed tigers..........but the jaguars and cougars settled in and....survived in SAAm to return to NaM about 6000 or 7000 years ago....actually I think the cougars are still on the move..they were rare north of the Peace R in the 1950 s, appearing near the Yukon border in the last couple of decades...they may have made it to mainland Alaska by now .
When the horses escaped the conquistadors in the early 1590 s they rapidly retook the American Plains and prairies......and golly this time the Indians re-tamed them a rode them like they were totally “native” ,,,,,,,,far cry from a site near the Assiniboine River where the “first bastion” left abundant tool markings on the horses bones there circa 8000BC.
Any way there were two herding mammals that survived the period...the caribou and the buffalo..........I suspect that gestation period may have come into play, and the large elephant like creatures were at a disadvantage...Dick Bell
Hi,
It is too difficult from a paleontological point of view. An example, a set of fossils that occurs in the eastern part of South America is quite resembling the set of the fossils of the western part of Africa, how we can estimate the dispersal time? It is complicated and needs so many assumptions.
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