Disproving Conventional Wisdom On Diversity Of Marine Fossils And Extinction Rates
Friday, July 11, 2008 - 09:14
in Paleontology & Archaeology
It took a decade of painstaking study, the cooperation of hundreds of researchers, and a database of more than 200,000 fossil records, but new research may be disproving much of the conventional wisdom about the diversity of marine fossils and extinction rates. While the research of other scientists showed eventual recoveries in the diversity of fossils after periods of extinction - especially the extinction 250 million years ago between the Permian and Triassic periods (also known as the "mother of all mass extinctions") -- new research shows that the number of species comes back up quickly -- at least on a geological time scale -- and then stays relatively flat.