Phanerozoic marine diversity and the fossil record

@article{Sepkoski1981PhanerozoicMD,
  title={Phanerozoic marine diversity and the fossil record},
  author={J John . Sepkoski and Richard K. Bambach and David M. Raup and James William Valentine},
  journal={Nature},
  year={1981},
  volume={293},
  pages={435-437}
}
Strong correlations between various local and global estimates of Phanerozoic marine diversity for taxa below the ordinal level indicate a single pattern of change underlying all data on fossil density. Geological time alone seems insufficient to explain all of the significant covariation among the data sets, and it is proposed that the common pattern in diversity reflects the signal from a real evolutionary phenomenon strong enough to overcome the biases inherent in the fossil record. 
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374 Citations
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374 Citations

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Phanerozoic marine diversity: rock record modelling provides an independent test of large-scale trends

Using the fossil records of North America and Western Europe, it is demonstrated that a modelling approach applied to the combined data produces results that are significantly correlated with those derived from subsampling.

Marine diversity through the Phanerozoic: problems and prospects

  • A. Smith
  • Environmental Science, Geography
    Journal of the Geological Society
  • 2007
The fossil record provides direct evidence of how diversity has changed over time, but cannot be taken at face value. Diversity curves constructed from counting taxa in the rock record are seriously…

Mesozoic marine tetrapod diversity: mass extinctions and temporal heterogeneity in geological megabiases affecting vertebrates

Some evidence supports an extinction event near the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary, but the proposed end-Cenomanian extinction is probably an artefact of poor sampling, and consideration of sampling biases allows re-evaluation of proposed mass extinction events.

Patterns of generic extinction in the fossil record

Analysis of the stratigraphic records of 19,897 fossil genera indicates that most classes and orders show largely congruent rises and falls in extinction intensity throughout the Phanerozoic. Even an…

Phanerozoic Earth System Evolution and Marine Biodiversity

It is shown that Phanerozoic records of seawater chemistry and continental flooding contain information on the diversity of marine animals that is independent of sedimentary rock quantity and sampling, and relationships among variables suggest long-term interactions among continental flooding, sulfur and carbon cycling, and macroevolution.
...

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