Abstract
The early part of an adaptive radiation is thought1 to show more taxonomic turnover than later stages. I show here that the effect on probability of extinction is one of exponential decrease, and that in the case of marine families this regular decline was interrupted by the great Permian extinction. A new exponential decrease followed, at a somewhat faster rate. The Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction is the only other one detectably different from the scatter, and it had no apparent effect on extinction in the Cenozoic. These regularities support an interactive view of large-scale community evolution but do not uniquely determine the nature of the interaction.
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Van Valen, L. A resetting of Phanerozoic community evolution. Nature 307, 50–52 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1038/307050a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/307050a0
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