TESTING THE MARINE AND CONTINENTAL FOSSIL RECORDS

The fossil record of continental vertebrates is as good as that of ech inoderms at the family level, as shown by tests of the match of cladis tic and stratigraphic data and of relative completeness. If echinoderm s and vertebrates are typical of their environments, the continental f ossil record is not worse than the marine, despite the fact that, at a local level, fossils are usually more abundant in marine sequences th an in continental successions. The explanation of this paradox may be that vertebrates have attracted more intensive study than echinoderms, and thus the level of knowledge of their fossil record is some decade s ahead of that of echinoderms. This finding validates the use of diff erent kinds of fossil data in broad-scale phylogenetic studies.