Megabias

A megabias, or a taphonomic megabias is a large scale pattern in the quality of the fossil record that affects paleobiologic analysis at provincial to global levels and at timescales usually exceeding ten million years. It can result from major shifts in intrinsic and extrinsic properties of organisms, including morphology and behaviour in relation to other organisms, or shifts in the global environment, which can cause secular or long-term cyclic changes in preservation.

The fossil record exhibits bias at many different levels. At the most basic level, there is a global bias towards biomineralizing organisms, because biomineralized body parts are more resistant to decay and degradation. Due to the principle of uniformitarianism, there is a basic assumption in geology that the formation of rocks has occurred by the same naturalistic processes throughout history, and thus that the reach of such biases remains stable over time. A megabias is a direct contradiction of this, whereby changes occur in large scale paleobiologic patterns. This includes

It is generally assumed that the quality of the fossil record decreases globally and across all taxa with increasing age, because more time is available for the diagenesis and destruction of both fossils and enclosing rocks, and thus the term "megabias" is usually used to refer to global trends in preservation. However it has been noted that the fossil record of some taxa actually improves with greater age. Examples such as this, and other related paleobiological trends, clearly indicate the action of a megabias, but only within one particular taxon. Hence, it is necessary to define four classes of megabias related to the reach of the bias, first defined by Kowalewski and Flessa.

A change in the quality of a single taxon’s record. It may happen whenever evolutionary, environmental, or geologic trends affect the taxon’s fossilization potential.

This occurs when the fossilization potential varies from group to group. Among-taxon megabiases include both static and dynamic distortions. A static megabias is constant through time. For example, flatworms have always had a poor record relative to mollusks because mollusks as a taxon are almost always biomineralizing, whereas flatworms are almost never biomineralizing.

A dynamic megabias occurs when the fossilization potential of one group relative to that of another group changes through time. For example, lingulide brachiopods had a lower fossilization potential than articulate brachiopods, but only in the early Paleozoic. This has changed through time, governed by changes in bathymetry and lateral shifts in lithofacies associated with basin evolution. By the Middle Ordovician, articulates had diversified to become important components of all marine environments except the deep basin; inarticulates were most important in offshore and basinal settings. By moving away from the main taphonomic window, the inarticulates sacrificed their fossilization potential whilst not necessarily decreasing their biological diversity.

...
Wikipedia