They may also provide evidence of the morphology of structure not usually preserved. The fossil sample represented in the table below appears to represent a population killed and buried by a catastrophic flood. From this data prepare a life table. Indicate lx, dx and mortality rate for each age class. The purpose of description is to make one's observations available to others, the scientific community, thereby making them objective.
Observations are only meaningful in science as tests of a hypothesis.
Therefore, the hypothesis dictates the type of observations and the techniques most appropriate to their description that will best serve as tests of the hypothesis. In lieu of a novel hypothesis, observations of novel phenomena may be reported as evidence testing longstanding hypotheses such as the taxonomic relationships among all living organisms. For example, if the hypothesis concerns the ultrastructure of some skeletal element, scanning electron micrography may be the most appropriate means of illustrating the feature in question. On the other hand description of a new species may require a more general description by photography or drawing and a generalized verbal description. There are trends of progressive change in morphology that occur throughout the evolutionary history of the fusulinids in three distinct aspects of their morphology.