# Signor-Lipps effect

> English word · Noun

## Definitions
1. The principle that due to the incompleteness of the fossil record, the earliest and latest known occurrences of a taxon will almost never represent the ages of the actual earliest and latest organisms belonging to it.

## Etymology
Named after American paleontologists Philip Signor and Jere Lipps, who formally proposed it in 1982.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/signor-lipps-effect