>>53121419>this strange absence even being remarked IN-GAMEThe occult magazine entry for Slither Wing states that no Volcarona fossils have been found in Paldea, but that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any. Fossils are rare to begin with so it's possible none have just been discovered, and the conditions at the time may not have been suitable for formation of fossils. To know whether the absense of fossils indicates the absense of the species in the region or merely lack of discovered remains, we'd need to know more about the geology of the Paldean region at the time and the evolution of Volcarona's relatives
(for example, we can be quite confident that no tyrannosaur fossils will ever be found in South America, because at the time the first tyrannosaurs show up in the fossil record South America was already a separate landmass that would not be connected with any other continent again until after the dinosaurs had gone extinct. On the other hand, we do find tyrannosaur fossils in both Asia and North America, because those landmasses were still connected at the time tyrannosaurs evolved).
All that being said, it would have been neat if they had made some of the Scarlet pradox mons be based on the fossil mons. It's been theorized that the reason all fossil mons (before the gen 8 chimeric ones) are part rock-type is because they're reanimated from fossilized (i.e. turned to rock) remains, so the paradox versions could have had the rock-type replaced with something else to show what they actually could've been like in life.
