Self-similarity of extinction statistics in the fossil record

Ricard V. Solé (), Susanna C. Manrubia, Michael Benton and Per Bak
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Ricard V. Solé: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord
Susanna C. Manrubia: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord
Michael Benton: University of Bristol
Per Bak: Santa Fe Institute

Nature, 1997, vol. 388, issue 6644, 764-767

Abstract: Abstract The dynamical processes underlying evolution over geological timescales remain unclear1,2. Analyses of time series of the fossil record have highlighted the possible signature of periodicity in mass extinctions3,4, perhaps owing to external influences such as meteorite impacts. More recently the fluctuations in the evolutionary record have been proposed to result from intrinsic nonlinear dynamics for which self-organized criticality provides an appropriate theoretical framework5,6,7. A consequence of this controversial8 conjecture is that the fluctuations should be self-similar, exhibiting scaling behaviour like that seen in other biological9 and socioeconomic10,11 systems. The self-similar character is described by a 1/f power spectrum P(f), which measures the contributions of each frequency f to the overall time series. If self-similarity is present, then P(f) ≈ f− β with 0

Date: 1997
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DOI: 10.1038/41996

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