181
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: not found
      • Article: not found

      PHANEROZOIC BIODIVERSITY MASS EXTINCTIONS

      Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences
      Annual Reviews

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisher
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Related collections

          Most cited references103

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Mass extinctions in the marine fossil record.

          A new compilation of fossil data on invertebrate and vertebrate families indicates that four mass extinctions in the marine realm are statistically distinct from background extinction levels. These four occurred late in the Ordovician, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous periods. A fifth extinction event in the Devonian stands out from the background but is not statistically significant in these data. Background extinction rates appear to have declined since Cambrian time, which is consistent with the prediction that optimization of fitness should increase through evolutionary time.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Assessing the causes of late Pleistocene extinctions on the continents.

            One of the great debates about extinction is whether humans or climatic change caused the demise of the Pleistocene megafauna. Evidence from paleontology, climatology, archaeology, and ecology now supports the idea that humans contributed to extinction on some continents, but human hunting was not solely responsible for the pattern of extinction everywhere. Instead, evidence suggests that the intersection of human impacts with pronounced climatic change drove the precise timing and geography of extinction in the Northern Hemisphere. The story from the Southern Hemisphere is still unfolding. New evidence from Australia supports the view that humans helped cause extinctions there, but the correlation with climate is weak or contested. Firmer chronologies, more realistic ecological models, and regional paleoecological insights still are needed to understand details of the worldwide extinction pattern and the population dynamics of the species involved.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Report: not found

              A Geological Time Scale 2004

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences
                Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci.
                Annual Reviews
                0084-6597
                1545-4495
                May 2006
                May 2006
                : 34
                : 1
                : 127-155
                Article
                10.1146/annurev.earth.33.092203.122654
                0255d77b-c8bf-4722-b434-02d5031acdb9
                © 2006
                History

                Comments

                Comment on this article