ArticleNature ecology & evolution2022
Colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 55 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Systematic review of global historical marine ecology reveals geographical and taxonomic research gaps and biases.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Pooled it
- Environmental Context of Hominin Foot Evolution.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Staking out the frontiers: The limits of the metazoan shallow marine fossil record.Science advances · 2026Article
- Synergies and trade-offs for reaching global biodiversity and climate commitments.Nature communications · 2026Article
- #Yourpalaeolife: Interrogating the Status of Fieldwork Among Early Career Palaeontology Researchers.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- How do the principal megabiases in the fossil record affect the discovery of past bryophyte diversity?Annals of botany · 2026Article
- Local expertise anchors biodiversity documentation, but geopolitical power drives parachute discovery.npj biodiversity · 2026Review
- Global biodiversity research requires sustained investment in local scientific infrastructure and capacities.npj biodiversity · 2026Article
- The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology's digital databases.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Where We Go From Here: Harnessing Queer Perspectives to Advance Practice in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- The flounder effect: disparities in taxonomic and ecological study intensity across extant and fossil marine organisms hamper conservation.npj biodiversity · 2026Review
- Early Ordovician sea scorpions from Morocco suggest Cambrian origins and main diversification of Eurypterida.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The hidden biodiversity knowledge split in biological collections.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Geopolitical impacts on the description of new terrestrial mollusc species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Landscape-explicit phylogeography illuminates the ecographic radiation of early archosauromorph reptiles.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- The first Silurian horseshoe crab reveals details of the xiphosuran ground plan.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A decade of vertebrate palaeontology research: global taxa distribution, gender dynamics and evolving methodologies.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Historical and ongoing inequities shape research visibility in Latin American aquatic mammal paleontology.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Global natural history infrastructure requires international solidarity, support, and investment in local capacity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Museum 'dark data' show variable impacts on deep-time biogeographic and evolutionary history.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sampling biases in the fossil record distort estimates of past biodiversity. However, these biases not only reflect the geological and spatial aspects of the fossil record, but also the historical and current collation of fossil data. We demonstrate how the legacy of colonialism and socioeconomic factors, such as wealth, education and political stability, impact the global distribution of fossil data over the past 30 years. We find that a global power imbalance persists in palaeontology, with researchers in high- or upper-middle-income countries holding a monopoly over palaeontological knowledge production by contributing to 97% of fossil data. As a result, some countries or regions tend to be better sampled than others, ultimately leading to heterogeneous spatial sampling across the globe. This illustrates how efforts to mitigate sampling biases to obtain a truly representative view of past biodiversity are not disconnected from the aim of diversifying and decolonizing our discipline.
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34969991What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.