Re: Preservational bias revisited

[Michael Sternberg <mstern@cnw.com>]

At 04:25 PM 6/14/97 -0400, John Bois wrote:
[snip]
...  Secondly, if it is true, is there any
>reason why nests in, say, wooded areas would be any less well preserved?
>If not, can't I interpret the absence of nests associated with vegetable
>matter as meaning that dinos (most?...all?...some?) laid their eggs in the
>open?

Forest floors are by nature poorly preserved in the fossil record. In
descending order (fastest to slowest) of decompositional rates we see:

Tropical forest > Grassland > Deciduous forest > Coniferous forest > tundra
 (1)

In addition, sedimentational processes as a result of fluvial or alluvial
activity is extremely low in forested areas, since they rarely are riparian
in nature.  Thus preservational bias is quite low.

Regards,
Michael

(1) Swift, Heal & Anderson, 1979, Decomposition in Terrestrial Ecosystems,
University of California Press