English: This image shows the marine
biodiversity during the
Phanerozoic. Note that this is a result of changes in both the rate of extinctions and the rate of new originations. The
Dresbachian extinction event in particular is obscured by nearly immediate replacement with new genera.
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Template:Phanerozoic biodiversity.
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Template:Phanerozoic biodiversity
Colour code:
- grey: total known genera from Sepkowski's catalogue (cited by Rohde & Muller)
- green: "well-defined genera", i.e. known genera excluding those represented by "single occurrences" and those whose dates are uncertain.
- red: trend for "well-defined genera". Dereived by fitting a third-order polynomial to the data.
- yellow: the "Big Five" mass extinctions.
- blue: other extinction events.
Reference: Rohde, R.A., Muller, R.A.,
Cycles in fossil diversity, March 2005, Nature, volume 434, pgs 208–210, url:
http://muller.lbl.gov/papers/Rohde-Muller-Nature.pdf, doi:10.1038/nature03339, issue:7030, pmid:15758998