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On the importance of global diversity trends and the viability of existing paleontological data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

Arnold I. Miller
Arnold I. Miller*
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, Post Office Box 210013, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0013. E-mail: arnold.miller@uc.edu
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Extract

Regardless of the macroevolutionary issues at stake, most students of biodiversity would agree that there is value in calibrating global biodiversity trends through critical intervals. To cite one obvious example, given the overwhelming interest in mass extinctions, we would certainly like to know the extent to which diversity declined during these events. Just as significantly, if we are to argue that any mass extinction was truly a global phenomenon, we must demonstrate definitively that its biotic effects reached around the world. Clearly, “standard” global compendia (e.g., Sepkoski 1992, 2002) are insufficient for the latter objective, because they contain no geographic or environmental information. At the least, a database that compares biodiversity transitions among different regions or paleoenvironments is required. Such analyses have the added benefit of providing opportunities to evaluate geographic and environmental selectivity in extinctions, an important facet of any attempt to understand what caused them (e.g., Raup and Jablonski 1993; Jablonski and Raup 1995).

Type
Matters of the Records
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , Winter 2003 , pp. 15 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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