Abstract
Analysis of extinction rates1,2 has gone a long way towards identifying the approximate time and magnitude of major mass-extinction episodes in Earth's history: late Ordovician, late Devonian, late Permian, late Triassic, and late Cretaceous. Here I extend an earlier analysis3 and present patterns of family-level background and mass-extinction rates for ten major marine groups. I show that (1) except for the late Permian event, mass-extinction rates for each taxon were often not higher than many of their 'normal' background rates evincing continuous variation between them; (2) mobile benthic organisms show low mass-extinction rates and low background rates but (3) planktonic and sessile organisms tend to have high mass-extinction and background rates. Thus the mass-extinction events appear qualitatively similar to background extinctions, reflecting more of the same processes, in contrast to a recent proposal4.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Raup, D. M. & Sepkoski, J. J. Jr Science 215, 1501–1503 (1982).
Raup, D. M. & Sepkoski, J. J. Jr Science 231, 833–836 (1986).
McKinney, M. L. Paleobiology 11, 227–233 (1985).
Jablonski, D. Science 231, 129–133 (1986).
Sepkoski, J. J. Jr A Compendium of Fossil Marine Families (Milwaukee Publication, Wisconsin, 1982).
Raup, D. M. Science 231, 1528–1533 (1986).
Landman, N. Nat. Hist. 84, 34–43 (1984).
Haynes, J. R. Foraminifera (MacMillan, London, 1981).
Alvarez, W. et al. Science 223, 1135–1141 (1984).
Hsu, K. J. et al. Science 216, 249–256 (1982).
Bakker, R. T. in Patterns of Evolution as Illustrated in the Fossil Record (ed. Hallam, A.) 439–468 (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1977).
Martin, P. S. & Klein, R. Quaternary Extinctions (University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1984).
Stanley, S. M. Macroevolution: Pattern and Process (W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1979).
Sepkoski, J. J. Jr Palaeobiology 10, 246–267 (1984).
McKinney, M. L. Geology 14, 36–38 (1986).
Sheehan, P. & Hansen, T. Geology 14, 868–879 (1986).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
McKinney, M. Taxonomic selectivity and continuous variation in mass and background extinctions of marine taxa. Nature 325, 143–145 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/325143a0
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/325143a0
- Springer Nature Limited
This article is cited by
-
Longevity of orders is related to the longevity of their constituent genera rather than genus richness
Theory in Biosciences (2009)