File:Phanerozoic Biodiversity.svg é unha versión vectorial deste ficheiro. Debería usarse esa versión no canto desta imaxe rasterizada cando sexa de mellor calidade.
Following Rohde & Muller (2005), this figure shows the apparent changes in marine biodiversity throughout the last 542 million years (the Phanerozoic eon) based on the first and last appearance of the 36380 genera recorded in the Sepkoski Compendium (2002). The "Big Five" mass extinctions of Raup and Sepkoski (1982) are labeled as well as a number of additional, but less well-known extinction events. Conventional symbols for the periods of w:geologic time appear along the bottom. The distinctions for "all genera" and "well-resolved genera" follow Rohde & Muller (2005) and reflect either the inclusion of all of Sepkoski's taxa or only those where the first and last appearances were well-defined in time.
It is presently a matter of scientific debate whether the long-term trend appearing here is a genuine reflection of biological changes or is instead a reflection of the biases inherent to the process of paleontological investigation. Some have argued that most, or all, of the large rise going into the modern day is merely a reflection of the greater availability and preservation of recent geologic sections. Others dispute this, and argue that most of the long-term changes reflect genuine biological processes.
Rohde & Muller also argue that the fluctuations in biodiversity, especially occurring in the early part of the record, are too regularly spaced to have occurred by random chance. They conclude on the basis of a statistical argument that some unknown process influenced the waxing and waning of life with roughly a 62 million year periodicity. Periodic astronomical and geophysical processes are considered, but no particular process is definitively implicated.
Copyright
This figure was originally prepared by Dragons flight from published data and is released under the GFDL.
Autorízase a copia, distribución e/ou modificación deste documento baixo os termos da licenza de documentación libre GNU, versión 1.2 ou calquera outra que posteriormente publique a Free Software Foundation; sen seccións invariables, textos de portada, nin textos de contraportada. Inclúese unha copia da devandita licenza na sección titulada GNU Free Documentation License.http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.htmlGFDLGNU Free Documentation Licensetruetrue
recoñecemento – Debe indicar a debida atribución de autoría, fornecer unha ligazón á licenza e indicar se se realizaron cambios. Pode facer isto de calquera forma razoable, mais non nunha forma que indique que quen posúe a licenza apoia ou subscribe o seu uso da obra.
compartir igual – Se altera, transforma ou amplía este contido, debe publicar as súas contribucións baixo a mesma licenza ou outra compatible á orixinal.
A etiqueta desta licenza engadiuse a este ficheiro como parte da actualización da licenza GFDL.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/CC BY-SA 3.0Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0truetrue
References
Raup, D. & Sepkoski, J. (1982). "Mass extinctions in the marine fossil record". Science215: 1501–1503.
Sepkoski, J. (2002) A Compendium of Fossil Marine Animal Genera (eds. Jablonski, D. & Foote, M.) Bull. Am. Paleontol. no. 363 (Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, NY).