Abstract

The fossilised birth-death (FBD) process provides a modelling framework that explicitly combines the diversification and fossil sampling processes. To date, the model has largely been applied to infer dated phylogenies, based on the analysis of phylogenetic (morphological or molecular) character data. The model can, however, be used to infer key macroevolutionary parameters (origination, extinction and fossil recovery rates), even in the total absence of phylogenetic character data. Here, I will discuss recent work into the application of the FBD model to recover metrics commonly used in quantitative paleobiology (origination, extinction, species richness) based on analyses of stratigraphic ranges or fossil occurrence data. The FBD model provides a mechanistic and flexible framework that has several key advantages compared to alternative methods, creating many opportunities for process-based inference in paleobiology.