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A call to the custodians of deep time

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Palaeontologists must model the causes of biodiversity rather than simply cataloguing fossils, says Douglas Erwin, as they curate the only record of ecosystems undamaged by humans.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Douglas Erwin is in the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC, USA and at the Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. erwind@si.edu,

    Douglas Erwin

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  1. Douglas Erwin
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Additional information

See Editorial, page 251 , biodiversity special at http://www.nature.com/darwin and palaeontology podcast at http://go.nature.com/UuNpgJ

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Erwin, D. A call to the custodians of deep time. Nature 462, 282–283 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/462282a

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