Abstract
Knowledge of the history of diversity through geological time is based on analysis of the fossil record. Because the fossil record gives only a very incomplete and highly biased view of the past history of life on earth, the reconstruction of that history has been, and continues to be, the subject of great debate. It is generally accepted that the fossil record can give a reasonable insight into past diversity in terms of taxonomic richness, particularly at higher taxonomic levels. However, it is far more difficult to derive other, more ecologically based, measures of diversity from it, as these require the reconstruction of palaeoenvironments, a far more contentious exercise than palaeotaxonomy.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Jenkins, M. (1992). Species Diversity: An Introduction. In: Groombridge, B. (eds) Global Biodiversity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2282-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2282-5_5
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