On the basis of stasis: documentation of taxonomy durations in paleontology and the necessity of museum voucher specimens

Most species exhibit morphological stasis following speciation and this is a key feature of the concept of punctuated equilibria. Stasis results in species often having long durations on geological time scales. Durational data are fundamental to many types of paleobiological analyses and are ideally based on occurrence data represented by specimens in museum collections. Often, however, durational data are presented without supporting information about voucher specimens that document stratigraphic ranges, including first and last appearances. We use the iconic Devonian trilobite Eldredgeops rana to demonstrate that durational data can be challenging to determine at multiple taxonomic levels. Further, we show that different datasets—including Sepkoski’s published databases, the Paleobiology Database, and iDigBio—give discordant results concerning first and last occurrences. We argue that paleontologists should adopt two general best practices to help address these problems. First, system..., , , # Data from: On the basis of stasis: documentation of taxonomy durations in paleontology and the necessity of museum voucher specimens

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p8cz8wb0k](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p8cz8wb0k)

**Description of the data and file structure**

Supplementary tables 1-10 for analyses described in the text. Tables consist of subsets of raw taxon occurrence data downloaded from the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) and iDigBio websites. Data fields that were not utilized in or relevant to analyses were removed from the files shared here.

According to Uhen et al. (2023), \"PBDB data and visualizations are available to the public based on a Creative Commons license that requires no permission nor attribution for use (a CC-0 international License)\" (p. 4). Publication: Uhen, M. D., Allen, B., Behboudi, N., Clapham, M. E., Dunne, E., Hendy, A., Holroyd, P. A., Hopkins, M., Mannion, P., Novack-Gottshall, P., Pimiento, C., and Wagner, P. 2023. Paleobiology Database User Guide V..., ,