Name: Anonymous 2007-02-14 22:49
Would it be possible for scientists to take all the fossils ever found of a certain species, and assuming the finds would be evenly distributed among all different species based on the numbers that have existed for all time going back to a certain point, could scientists estimate a very rough number of how many creatures of that specific species ever existed on this planet throughout history? Or perhaps, not that grandoise, but estimate the percent of the animal population that that species represented at a specific time range in history? For example, if they found 90 triceratops fossils during the X period, and 9000 non-triceratops fossils during the X period, could they estimate the percent of the animal populations that triceratops made up in that time period was 1%? Or do they not have enough fossils to even do this and make it statistically accurate enough? Or perhaps it would be skewed because some areas are hard to dig for fossils in, like African countries involved in civil wars...