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Using Generative Art to Convey Past and Future Climate Transitions

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How predictable are mass extinction events?

William J Foster¹, Bethany J Allen^2,3,4, Niklas H Kitzmann^5,6

¹Institute for Geology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.

Royal Society Open Science

|March 20, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Predicting modern biodiversity loss using ancient mass extinctions is unreliable. Past extinction patterns are inconsistent, showing poor predictive power for future extinction risks due to evolutionary changes.

Keywords:

end-Cretaceous end-Permian end-Triassic fossil machine learning mass extinction

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Area of Science:

Paleontology
Ecology
Machine Learning

Background:

Modern extinction drivers overlap with past mass extinction events.
Understanding past extinction selectivity could inform predictions for the current biodiversity crisis.

Purpose of the Study:

To determine if extinction risk patterns from past mass extinctions can predict future biodiversity loss.
To assess the consistency of extinction selectivity across major marine mass extinctions.

Main Methods:

Applied a functional trait-based model with machine learning to fossil data.
Analyzed marine fossil datasets from the end-Permian, end-Triassic, and end-Cretaceous mass extinctions.
Inferred extinction selectivity and tested predictive performance between events.

Main Results:

Extinction selectivity patterns showed some similarities but were largely inconsistent across mass extinctions.
The model's predictive performance for extinction selectivity between events was poor.
Inconsistency is linked to marine ecosystem evolution and Earth system changes.

Conclusions:

Past mass extinctions are not reliable predictors of extinction risk in the modern biodiversity crisis.
Evolutionary dynamics and community structure shifts limit the predictability of extinction events over geological time.