Patterns of Change in Fossil Invertebrates

Abstract

The problem with using fossils as evidence for evolution is that they are dead. You cannot experiment on them or watch them do anything. However, fossils more than make up for this shortcoming and provide compelling evidence for evolutionary change, because of their unique temporal dimension. Fossils give us information not just about the form of organisms, but also about their form through time. “Reading” this information from the fossil record, however, requires that we understand a central concept about how all science (and especially historical science) works, namely that processes produce patterns and, therefore, process can be reconstructed or inferred from those patterns. This is true even in the “hard” or “experimental” sciences. You do not have to see a process occur to have confidence that it did. When we look at the fossil record and ask, “How did it come to be this way?”, we answer by inferring continuity among the patterns resulting from a process of change that took place millions of years ago. We call that inferred process of continuity with change evolution.