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Palaeontological data and identifying mass extinctions.

¹Dept of Geology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UKBS8 1RJ.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

|January 18, 2011

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Assessing the fossil record

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Area of Science:

Paleontology
Stratigraphy
Geology

Background:

The fossil record is often assumed to directly reflect mass extinction events.
Interpreting extinction patterns from fossils presents challenges, particularly regarding range completeness and extinction event shapes.
The Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary serves as a case study for these interpretive difficulties.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the challenges in directly reading mass extinctions from the fossil record.
To evaluate methods for assessing the completeness of stratigraphic ranges of taxa.
To determine the reliability of the fossil record for documenting extinction events.

Main Methods:

Employing a statistical approach to assess the relative completeness of taxon ranges.
Utilizing tests based on fossil collection effort, especially near the inferred ends of taxon ranges.
Analyzing data from the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary.

Main Results:

Recent analyses indicate that the fossil record's completeness varies, with improvements in certain areas.
The study highlights the difficulty in determining true stratigraphic ranges and extinction event shapes.
The fossil record is demonstrably improving in quality and completeness in studied intervals.

Conclusions:

Direct interpretation of mass extinctions from the fossil record is challenging due to range incompleteness.
Statistical and collection-effort based methods can help assess the reliability of fossil data.
Palaeontologists are increasingly equipped to precisely document extinction event characteristics as the fossil record quality improves.