Phanerozoic marine biodiversity dynamics in light of the incompleteness of the fossil record.

ABSTRACT: Long-term evolutionary dynamics have been approached through quantitative analysis of the fossil record, but without explicitly taking its incompleteness into account. Here we explore the temporal covariance structure of per-genus origination and extinction rates for global marine fossil genera throughout the Phanerozoic, both before and after corrections for the incompleteness of the fossil record. Using uncorrected data based on Sepkoski's compendium, we find significant autocovariance within origination and extinction rates, as well as covariance between extinction and origination, not one, but two, intervals later, corroborating evidence for the unexplained temporal gap found by past studies. However, these effects vanish when the data are corrected for the incompleteness of the fossil

SUBMITTER: Lu PJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1413823 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature