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Periodicity of extinctions in the geologic past.
Open accessAbstract
The temporal distribution of the major extinctions over the past 250 million years has been investigated statistically using various forms of time series analysis. The analyzed record is based on variation in extinction intensity for fossil families of marine vertebrates, invertebrates, and protozoans and contains 12 extinction events. The 12 events show a statistically significant periodicity (P less than 0.01) with a mean interval between events of 26 million years. Two of the events coincide with extinctions that have been previously linked to meteorite impacts (terminal Cretaceous and Late Eocene). Although the causes of the periodicity are unknown, it is possible that they are related to extraterrestrial forces (solar, solar system, or galactic).
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Cited by
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Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years
Foster, G. L., Royer, D. L., & Lunt, D. J. (2017) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms14845 · Cited by 774
Sepkoski, J. J. (1984) · Paleobiology · doi:10.1017/s0094837300008186 · Cited by 773
Self-citationOn the ages of flood basalt events
Courtillot, V. E., & Renne, P. R. (2003) · Comptes Rendus. Géoscience · doi:10.1016/s1631-0713(03)00006-3 · Cited by 727
Diversification and Extinction in the History of Life
Benton, M. J. (1995) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.7701342 · Cited by 654
Metadata
- Authors
- Raup, D. M., & Sepkoski, J. J.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 1984-02
- Volume
- 81
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 801-805
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- OpenAlex
- W2036995861
- Cited by
- 974
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 84.14
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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- Raup, D. M., & Sepkoski, J. J. (1984). Periodicity of extinctions in the geologic past. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.81.3.801
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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