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Decline in extinction rates and scale invariance in the fossil record

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

M. E. J. Newman  and
Gunther J. Eble
M. E. J. Newman
Affiliation:
Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501. Email: mark@santafe.edu
Gunther J. Eble
Affiliation:
Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, and Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution, MRC-121, Washington, D.C. 20560. Email: eble@santafe.edu Email: ebleg@nmnh.si.edu
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Abstract

We show that the decline in the extinction rate during the Phanerozoic can be accurately described by a logarithmic fit to the cumulative total extinction. This implies that extinction intensity is falling off approximately as the reciprocal of time. We demonstrate that this observation alone is sufficient to explain the existence of the proposed power-law forms in the distribution of the sizes of extinction events and in the power spectrum of Phanerozoic extinction, results that previously have been explained by appealing to self-organized critical theories of evolutionary dynamics.

Type
Articles
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , Fall 1999 , pp. 434 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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