Quick
Search: 
 
advanced search
 GSW Home    GeoRef Home    My GSW Alerts    Contact GSW    About GSW    Journals List    Help 
Paleobiology Don't get GSW? Talk to your librarian.
JOURNAL HOME HELP CONTACT PUBLISHER SUBSCRIBE ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS

Paleobiology; February 2008; v. 34; no. 1; p. 80-103; DOI: 10.1666/07019.1
© 2008 Paleontological Society
This Article
Right arrow Figures Only
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by McGowan, A. J.
Right arrow Articles by Smith, A. B.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
GeoRef
Right arrow GeoRef Citation

Are global Phanerozoic marine diversity curves truly global? A study of the relationship between regional rock records and global Phanerozoic marine diversity

Alistair J. McGowan1 and Andrew B. Smith1

1 Alistair J. McGowan and Andrew B. Smith. Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom. a.mcgowan{at}nhm.ac.uk; abs{at}nhm.ac.uk

The consensus view that the amount of rock available for sampling does not significantly and systematically bias Phanerozoic marine diversity patterns has broken down. How changes in rock availability and sampling intensity affect our estimates of past biodiversity has been investigated with a variety of new approaches. A number of proxies for the amount of rock available for sampling have been used, but most of these proxies do not rely directly on evidence from large-scale geological maps (maps that cover small areas) and accompanying memoirs. Most previous map-based studies focused on single regions or relied on small-scale synoptic maps. We collected data from published geological maps and memoirs from western Europe, Australia, and Chile, which we combined with COSUNA data from the United States to generate the first multiregional data set for investigating whether the global Phanerozoic marine diversity record is a true global record, or is instead biased toward North America and Western Europe as has long been suspected. Both short and long-term trends in variation in the amount of outcrop display limited correlation among the regions studied. A series of diversification models obtained better matches to observed fossil diversity from the European and U.S. records than for the Chilean and Australian records, further supporting suspicions that the global Phanerozoic diversity curve is disproportionately influenced by European and U.S. fossil data. These results indicate that future research into Phanerozoic marine diversity patterns should not continue to apply global eustatic curves as a proxy for rock at outcrop, but should use regional data on rock occurrence.




This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
PaleobiologyHome page
D. P. G. Bond and P. B. Wignall
Latitudinal selectivity of foraminifer extinctions during the late Guadalupian crisis
Paleobiology, December 1, 2009; 35(4): 465 - 483.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Home page
Proc R Soc BHome page
R. B. J. Benson, R. J. Butler, J. Lindgren, and A. S. Smith
Mesozoic marine tetrapod diversity: mass extinctions and temporal heterogeneity in geological megabiases affecting vertebrates
Proc R Soc B, November 18, 2009; (2009) rspb.2009.1845v1.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Home page
PaleobiologyHome page
R. J. Butler, P. M. Barrett, S. Nowbath, and P. Upchurch
Estimating the effects of sampling biases on pterosaur diversity patterns: implications for hypotheses of bird/pterosaur competitive replacement
Paleobiology, September 1, 2009; 35(3): 432 - 446.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Home page
Proc R Soc BHome page
P. M. Barrett, A. J. McGowan, and V. Page
Dinosaur diversity and the rock record
Proc R Soc B, July 22, 2009; 276(1667): 2667 - 2674.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Home page
Proc R Soc BHome page
F. G Marx
Marine mammals through time: when less is more in studying palaeodiversity
Proc R Soc B, March 7, 2009; 276(1658): 887 - 892.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Home page
PaleobiologyHome page
P. D. Wall, L. C. Ivany, and B. H. Wilkinson
Revisiting Raup: exploring the influence of outcrop area on diversity in light of modern sample-standardization techniques
Paleobiology, January 1, 2009; 35(1): 146 - 167.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]




JOURNAL HOME HELP CONTACT PUBLISHER SUBSCRIBE ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright © 2009 by Paleontological Society