Abstract
Inferring cause and effect from the fossil record is not a wholly satisfying enterprise. The evidence is stale. Many useful details are missing, perhaps never to be found. Sequential events may be collapsed together, inverted, or mixed with evidence from other times. Few relevant parameters can be measured directly. Paleoecologists must forge ahead despite these obstacles, however, as extinction and environmental change are subjects too important to ignore.
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Burney, D.A. (1999). Rates, Patterns, and Processes of Landscape Transformation and Extinction in Madagascar. In: MacPhee, R.D.E. (eds) Extinctions in Near Time. Advances in Vertebrate Paleobiology, vol 2. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-5202-1_7
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