Extinction Event - Patterns in Frequency

Patterns in Frequency

It has been suggested variously that extinction events occurred periodically, every 26 to 30 million years, or that diversity fluctuates episodically every ~62 million years. Various ideas attempt to explain the supposed pattern, including the presence of a hypothetical companion star to the sun, oscillations in the galactic plane, or passage through the Milky Way's spiral arms. However, other authors have concluded the data on marine mass extinctions do not fit with the idea that mass extinctions are periodic, or that ecosystems gradually build up to a point at which a mass extinction is inevitable. Many of the proposed correlations have been argued to be spurious. Others have argued that there is strong evidence supporting periodicity in a variety of records, and additional evidence in the form of coincident periodic variation in nonbiological geochemical variables.

Mass extinctions are thought to result when a long-term stress is compounded by a short term shock. Over the course of the Phanerozoic, individual taxa appear to be less likely to become extinct at any time, which may reflect more robust food webs as well as less extinction-prone species and other factors such as continental distribution. However, even after accounting for sampling bias, there does appear to be a gradual decrease in extinction and origination rates during the Phanerozoic. This may represent the fact that groups with higher turnover rates are more likely to become extinct by chance; or it may be an artefact of taxonomy: families tend to become more speciose, therefore less prone to extinction, over time; and larger taxonomic groups (by definition) appear earlier in geological time.

It has also been suggested that the oceans have gradually become more hospitable to life over the last 500 million years, and thus less vulnerable to mass extinctions, but susceptibility to extinction at a taxonomic level does not appear to make mass extinctions more or less probable.