Mass Extinctions in the Marine Fossil Record | Semantic Scholar

It is shown that the plant fossil record only provides evidence of two mass taxonomic extinction events, one through the Carboniferous‐Permian transition, the other during middle‐late Permian times, which differs significantly from the mass extinctions recognized in the marine realm and suggests that vascular plants have a special capacity for surviving abrupt environmental changes.

It is shown that family diversity rose with time, and in particular from the Cretaceous to the present day, and the present evidence does not support the view that mass extinctions are statistically distinguishable from background extinctions.

Analysis of the fossil record of microbes, algae, fungi, protists, plants, and animals shows that the diversity of both marine and continental life increased exponentially since the end of the Precambrian, but no support was found for the periodicity of mass extinctions.

A new compilation of the amount of exposed marine sedimentary rock is used to predict how the observed fossil record of extinction would appear if the time series of true extinction rates were in fact smooth, and supports the hypothesis that much of the observed short-term volatility in extinction rates is an artefact of variability in the stratigraphic record.