Why the Early Paleozoic was intrinsically prone to marine extinction.

ABSTRACT: The geological record of marine animal biodiversity reflects the interplay between changing rates of speciation versus extinction. Compared to mass extinctions, background extinctions have received little attention. To disentangle the different contributions of global climate state, continental configuration, and atmospheric oxygen concentration (pO₂) to variations in background extinction rates, we drive an animal physiological model with the environmental outputs from an Earth system model across intervals spanning the past 541 million years. We find that climate and continental configuration combined to make extinction susceptibility an order of magnitude higher during the Early Paleozoic than during the rest of the Phanerozoic, consistent with extinction rates derived

SUBMITTER: Pohl A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10468122 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature