Determinants of extinction in the fossil record

Shanan E. Peters () and Michael Foote
Additional contact information
Shanan E. Peters: University of Chicago
Michael Foote: University of Chicago

Nature, 2002, vol. 416, issue 6879, 420-424

Abstract: Abstract The causes of mass extinctions and the nature of biological selectivity at extinction events are central questions in palaeobiology. It has long been recognized, however, that the amount of sedimentary rock available for sampling may bias perceptions of biodiversity1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and estimates of taxonomic rates of evolution5,6,7,8. This problem has been particularly noted with respect to the principal mass extinctions5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12. Here we use a new compilation of the amount of exposed marine sedimentary rock to predict how the observed fossil record of extinction would appear if the time series of true extinction rates were in fact smooth. Many features of the highly variable record of apparent extinction rates within marine animals can be predicted on the basis of temporal variation in the amount of exposed rock. Although this result is consistent with the possibility that a common geological cause determines both true extinction rates and the amount of exposed rock, it also supports the hypothesis that much of the observed short-term volatility in extinction rates is an artefact of variability in the stratigraphic record.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/416420a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:416:y:2002:i:6879:d:10.1038_416420a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/416420a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().