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Macroevolutionary implications of mass extinction — evidence from an Upper Cambrian stage boundary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

Stephen R. Westrop
Stephen R. Westrop*
Affiliation:
Centre for Sedimentary Studies, Department of Geological Sciences, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario L2S 3A1, Canada
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Abstract

Survival of North American shelf trilobite families during a mass extinction across the upper boundary of the Upper Cambrian Sunwaptan Stage (=“Ptychaspid Biomere”) cannot be predicted from patterns of turnover among their component species: on the shelf, stratigraphic ranges of species belonging to surviving families do not differ significantly from those of eliminated families. Thus, the sorting of families during the extinctions cannot be explained by simple upward causation from the individual level. However, families that ranged from shelf to slope environments before the extinctions (most of which are pandemic) fared significantly better than those confined to shelf settings (which tend to be endemic to North America), indicating that family survival was influenced by geographic and environmental distribution, a property emergent above the individual level. One factor implicated in clade survival during normal background times, high species richness, did not influence the outcome of mass extinction. The results affirm the importance of a hierarchical approach to the interpretation of macroevolutionary patterns and provide some support to the suggestion that sorting processes operating during mass extinctions differ from those of background times.

Type
Research Article
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , Winter 1989 , pp. 46 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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