Ten years in the library: new data confirm paleontological patterns

Area of Science:

• Paleontology
• Macroevolution
• Marine Biology

Background:

• Paleontological databases are crucial for understanding macroevolutionary patterns.
• Previous studies relied on data compilations from specific years, potentially introducing biases due to data changes over time.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare macroevolutionary patterns derived from two distinct compilations of fossil marine animal family origination and extinction times.
• To assess the impact of database evolution on the perceived macroevolutionary trends.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis of two paleontological databases (1982 and 1992) detailing fossil marine animal family origination and extinction.
• Evaluation of changes in data content, including taxon additions/deletions and stratigraphic resolution improvements.
• Statistical comparison of diversity curves and origination/extinction rates derived from both databases.

Main Results:

• Significant updates occurred in the databases over ten years, with substantial changes in family composition and data resolution.
• Despite data revisions, macroevolutionary patterns, including diversity trends and major radiation/extinction events, remained consistent between the two compilations.
• Diversity curves showed high similarity (99% goodness-of-fit), with the newer database averaging 13% higher diversity.
• Origination and extinction rates also demonstrated strong agreement (83-95% fit).

Conclusions:

• Apparent macroevolutionary patterns in marine fauna are robust to changes in paleontological databases, provided the datasets are sufficiently large.
• Data errors and taxonomic arbitrariness do not necessarily hinder the analysis of macroevolutionary patterns in numerous datasets.
• The consistency of patterns across different database versions supports the reliability of large-scale paleontological data for macroevolutionary studies.