Data from: Bedrock geological map predictions for Phanerozoic fossil occurrences

This is the supplementary data repository of the Paleobiology paper
titled Bedrock Geological Map Predictions for Phanerozoic Fossil
Occurrences. Geographically-explicit, taxonomically resolved fossil
occurrences are necessary for reconstructing macroevolutionary patterns
and for testing a wide range of hypotheses in the Earth and life sciences.
Heterogeneity in the spatial and temporal distribution of fossil
occurrences in the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) is attributable to several
different factors, including turnover among biological communities,
socioeconomic disparities in the intensity of paleontological research,
and geological controls on the distribution and fossil yield of
sedimentary deposits. Here we use the intersection of global geologic map
data from Macrostrat and fossil collections in the PBDB to assess the
extent to which the potentially fossil-bearing, surface-expressed
sedimentary record has yielded fossil occurrences. We find a significant
and moderately strong positive correlation between geologic map area and
the number of fossil occurrences. This correlation is consistent
regardless of map unit age and binning protocol, except at period level;
the Neogene and Quaternary have non-marine map units covering large areas
and yielding fewer occurrences than expected. The sedimentary record of
North America and Europe yields significantly more fossil occurrences per
sedimentary area than similarly-aged deposits in most of the rest of the
world. However, geographic differences in area and age of sedimentary
deposits lead to regionally different expectations for fossil occurrences.
Using the sampling of surface-expressed sedimentary units in North America
and Europe as a predictor for what might be recoverable from the
surface-expressed sedimentary deposits of other regions, we find that the
rest of the globe is approximately 45% as well sampled in the PBDB. Using
age and area of bedrock and sampling in North America and Europe as a
basis for prediction, we estimate that over 639 thousand occurrences from
outside of these regions would need to be added to the PBDB to achieve
global geological parity in sampling. In general, new terrestrial fossil
occurrences are expected to have the greatest impact on macroevolutionary
patterns.