'Missing link', Fossil of Seal Found

[doppelganger]

I think if you look at the good fossil locations you will find they run a wide range of habitats and geographical regions. From Florida to Greenland and the Great Rift Valley to Antarctica.
Tropics like the Messel shale to Tundra mammoths.

It depends on what you're looking for and from when. Spread out over hundreds of millions of years almost anyplace is likely to have had periods of time hospitable to fossil preservation. 250 million year old amphibian finds in what is now the Sahara would have been deposited when that was still in the middle of Pangaea. Aside from dinosaurs, the big finds that make the news are the more recent mammalian so-called "missing links" like this walking ancestor of seals. And as 9/10s intimated, they do tend to turn up in certain places more often than others.

 

[painted wolf]

Granted, rocks of certain ages erode out of certain areas more often than others.
New Hampshire for example has been scoured of any significant fossil bearing rock.

Greenland is great for Devonian rocks. Kansas is perfect for Cretaceous oceans while Nebraska is great for Miocene mammals. Some places are good for a wide variety of times.

These are biases of erosion and deposition...

Miocene mammals I've heard of come mostly from the Great Planes, Argentina, East Africa, Europe, India... some from Australia (though I don't have a great knowledge of Australian prehistoric fauna). This new focus on the high Canadian and Greenland islands is just amazing to me.

wa:do

 

[j76]

amazing to me too