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Limits to biodiversity cycles from a unified model of mass-extinction events

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2011

Georg Feulner
Georg Feulner
Affiliation:
Earth System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, P.O. Box 60 12 03, D-14412 Potsdam, Germany e-mail: feulner@pik-potsdam.de
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Abstract

Episodes of species mass extinction dramatically affected the evolution of life on Earth, but their causes remain a source of debate. Even more controversy surrounds the hypothesis of periodicity in the fossil record, with conflicting views still being published in the scientific literature, often even based on the same state-of-the-art datasets. From an empirical point of view, limitations of the currently available data on extinctions and possible causes remain an important issue. From a theoretical point of view, it is likely that a focus on single extinction causes and strong periodic forcings has strongly contributed to this controversy. Here I show that if there is a periodic extinction signal at all, it is much more likely to result from a combination of a comparatively weak periodic cause and various random factors. Tests of this unified model of mass extinctions on the available data show that the model is formally better than a model with random extinction causes only. However, the contribution of the periodic component is small compared to factors such as impacts or volcanic eruptions.

Keywords

evolutionmacroevolutionmass extinctionspaleobiology
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 123 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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