“We assume soils in the past had similar relationships to vegetation as what we observe today.”
Well, I heard an old saying about assuming. Anyone know what it is?
I’m going to go out on a limb (pardon the expression) and posit that the relationship between plants and soils then and now allows for safe assumptions
In other words, the National Science Foundation spent your hard earned tax dollars to study six million year old dirt in Africa to discover that it is... dirt. I promise not to assume this was money well spent.
huldah1776: "Well, I heard an old saying about assuming. Anyone know what it is?"
"Old sayings" are not necessarily valid science. ;-)
Words like: assumptions, postulates, premises, theses, stipulations, propositions, suppositions, presumptions, hypotheses, theories, data, etc. -- all have strict scientific definitions, and all are typically misused in normal conversations.
Your question in this particular case is whether that "assumption" is warranted, or not?
The answer starts with those basic assumptions of science itself as described, for instance, here:
"Philosophy of science looks at the underpinning logic of the scientific method, at what separates science from non-science, and the ethic that is implicit in science.
There are basic assumptions derived from philosophy that form the base of the scientific method - namely, that reality is objective and consistent, that humans have the capacity to perceive reality accurately, and that rational explanations exist for elements of the real world.
These assumptions from methodological naturalism form the basis on which science is grounded."
Are these assumption all valid?
Well, all the scientific evidence we have suggests it is, no evidence suggests otherwise.
But if any serious scientist could ever produce such evidence to the contrary, it would leave a lot people scratching their heads and wondering how they had been such, ahem... er... fools all these years. ;-)