One Egg or Two? Statistics Helps Shed Light on Paleontology Mystery

One of the goals of paleontology is to connect what we learn through fossil records of extinct animals' biology to the biology of contemporary animals. A product of such work is the construction of phylogenetic trees that trace animal morphology and behavior across many generations and species of animals.

The detail in which the most recent branches in such trees can be articulated often overwhelms the detail possible for the oldest branches. In contrast to biologists who enjoy easy access to large numbers of living members of the species they study, paleontologists are at the mercy of what is originally recorded in the fossil record and what remains intact long enough to surface for examination.

Therefore, the excitement generated by the recent finding of just one very well preserved nest of a small dinosaur in Montana, Troodon formosus, is understandable. Equally understandable is the paleontologists' desire to extract as much information from the nest as possible. As we will see, despite their rather paltry n value of 1, their quest led mathematicians to one of the limits of contemporary maathematics.