Pull of the recent
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The Pull of the Recent (POR) describes a phenomenon in which a combination of factors causes palaeontologists to overestimate diversity towards the present day. Biased preservation and sampling in the fossil record results in past biodiversity estimates to be lower with modern taxa being considered more diverse because present biodiversity is the best sampled.[1] However the overall impact of the POR does not seem to be as large as originally thought.[2][3]