Abstract
ACATACLASM is the result of an exceptional drought, flood, heat, cold, volcanic disturbance, or change in constituents of atmosphere or ocean, or other change in environment which over a large area is fatal to all species or individuals saving those which are exceptionally provided, quantitatively or qualitatively, so as to survive the ordeal. This definition is in strict agreement with Southey's use of the word in 1834 (Oxford Diet.). We may consider the essential phenomenon of a cataclasm as the reduction, by some violent happening, of a populous region of earth or sea to sterile emptiness, which is repopulated by the few survivors of the disaster.† Destruction may come up.on all living beings from a volcano, or from a volcanic wave upon land and freshwater organisms, or from a pandemic disease upon only a single group of animals.
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BIDDER, G. The Importance of Cataclasms in Evolution*. Nature 125, 783–786 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/125783a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/125783a0