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2.5 discuss the difficulty of interpreting the past from the fossil record alone, including: conflicting dates based on different technologies the paucity of the fossil record different interpretations of the same evidence
discuss the difficulty of interpreting the past from the fossil record alone, including:
- conflicting dates based on different technologies
- the paucity of the fossil record
- different interpretations of the same evidence
Conflicting dates based on different technologies
- New evidence and techniques become available at different times. The different technologies will each have a different margin of accuracy. Some methods may give results that are accurate to thousands of year, others say, to tens of thousands of years. Therefore each method can lead to a different interpretation of the fossil age.
The paucity of the fossil record
- Fossils are a rare occurrence. There are gaps in the fossil record and the fossil record is heavily weighted towards the organisms that have hard parts such as the shells of molluscs. Soft-bodied animals are not fossilised as often. Fossils tend to be incomplete (an entire skeleton is unusual to find due to the problems of time and the fossilisation process) and this can make it difficult to interpret some features of a fossil or a species. The hardest parts of primate bodies are the teeth and jaws. These are found more often and some species are only known from a single specimen of a tooth. Additionally, the destruction of fossils can occur through earth processes such as the weathering of sediments. Many important hominid fossils have been found lying on the surface. If someone who knew what they were had not discovered them they may have been lost forever.
Different interpretations of the same evidence
- Different scientists may specialise in different areas and therefore interpret the evidence differently. Different people/scientists have different pre-conceived ideas that can affect their interpretations. There are a lot of anthropologists working in the area of humans evolution and so it is not surprising that there are different interpretations of the same evidence. Also, a fossil may be unusual in some way, e.g. through disease, age or the fossilisation process. If the only evidence you have for a species is a single tooth then the rest of the anatomy and physiology of the fossil is open to the interpretation of each of the people working on it.