Dunhill, AM and Wills, MA (2015) Geographic range did not confer resilience to extinction in terrestrial vertebrates at the end-Triassic crisis. Nature Communications, 6. 7980. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Rates of extinction vary greatly through geological time, with losses particularly concentrated in mass extinctions. Species duration at other times varies greatly, but the reasons for this are unclear. Geographical range correlates with lineage duration amongst marine invertebrates, but it is less clear how far this generality extends to other groups in other habitats. It is also unclear whether a wide geographical distribution makes groups more likely to survive mass extinctions. Here we test for extinction selectivity amongst terrestrial vertebrates across the end-Triassic event. We demonstrate that terrestrial vertebrate clades with larger geographical ranges were more resilient to extinction than those with smaller ranges throughout the Triassic and Jurassic. However, this relationship weakened with increasing proximity to the end-Triassic mass extinction, breaking down altogether across the event itself. We demonstrate that these findings are not a function of sampling biases; a perennial issue in studies of this kind.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Nature Communications. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 13 Oct 2015 15:06 |
Last Modified: | 16 Jan 2018 07:46 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8980 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Publishing Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/ncomms8980 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:90716 |