Extended Data Fig. 5: Analysis of 200 simulated datasets with sampling rates strongly increasing through time using a BBB model with time-varying sampling rates.

The times of origin were frequently underestimated (a); circles and bars indicate posterior estimates and 95% credible intervals. The relative errors on the time of origin were smaller in datasets with richer simulated fossil record (b). The size of the 95% credible intervals around the times of origin decreased with increasing numb er of fossils (c). The log variances were slightly underestimated (d), while the estimated sampling rates at the time of origin and rate trends (e and f, respectively; the X-axis is log₁₀-transformed) cannot be plotted against true values because they do not have a direct equivalent in the underlying simulations. The distribution from which sampling rates were sampled for each time bin is shown for reference in Extended Data Fig. 3f.