A flexible Bayesian method for estimating stratigraphic intervals and their co-occurrence in time

The fossil record is both incomplete and full of biases, which hinders making inferences about the past of life on earth. Stratigraphic intervals help us estimate two important quantities from the fossil record of a given lineage, its origination and extinction times.

Many models are available in the literature. This toolset is complemented here by proposing a flexible method which allows to estimate origination and extinction times, as well as model preservation potential in flexible ways.

A method is presented for representing the stratigraphic interval as a continuous distribution by integrating over parameter uncertainty throughthe use of the posterior predictive distribution. It is possible then to combine these distributions using conflation, to build a time probabilistic model for the co-occurrence of these intervals.

Empirical examples using Palynomorphs and the origination time of the marine Barracudas are used for illustrating the potential of the method. The methods are implemented in the StratIntervals.jl Julia package, which allows a big amount of possible prior distributions, and MCMC samplers.