Disentangling temporal patterns in our perception of the fossil history of gymnosperms

By taking gymnosperms as a case study, this article evaluates the perception of plant life history from the fossil record to test the biases associated with the time-dependent aspects of the taxonomy, following a stepwise modelling procedure based on two divergent sets of time units. The idea that the effects of the temporal component of paleobiological inference need to be evaluated to remove any possible bias in our interpretation and perception of plant evolution based on analyses of large-scale data sets is investigated. The results reveal important differences in our perception of the tempo of gymnosperm evolution and how it is biased in terms of time unit length due to the loss of information as a consequence of the timescale resolution. Despite singletons representing real morphological diversity translated into independent taxonomic categories, these taxa can distort perceptions of the intensity of the long paleofloristic diversification moments of gymnosperms if their effect is not considered. This study shows a complete overview of the evolutionary profiles of gymnosperms with significant discrepancies in the function of how singletons are quantitatively processed in paleobotanical data analyses, and it provides new evidence about how the 'zoom effect' can magnify our perception of extinction events. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.