Evidence
Jablonski found that the extinction rate of marine invertebrates was significantly higher in the stage (major subdivision of an epoch – typically 2–10 million years' duration) following a mass extinction than in the stages preceding the mass extinction. His analysis focused on marine molluscs since they constitute the most abundant group of fossils and are therefore the least likely to produce sampling errors. Jablonski suggested that two possible explanations deserved further study:
- Post-extinction physical environments differed from pre-extinction environments in ways which were disadvantageous to the "dead clades walking".
- Ecosystems that developed after recoveries from mass extinctions may have been less favorable for the "dead clades walking".
"Dead Clade Walking" has since appeared in other scientists' writings about the aftermaths of mass extinctions.
Read more about this topic: Dead Clade Walking
Famous quotes containing the word evidence:
“You don’t decide to build a church because you have money in the bank. You build because God says this is what I should do. Faith is the supplier of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.”
—Jim Bakker (b. 1940)
“However backwards the world has been in former ages in the discovery of such points as GOD never meant us to know,—we have been more successful in our own days:Mthousands can trace out now the impressions of this divine intercourse in themselves, from the first moment they received it, and with such distinct intelligence of its progress and workings, as to require no evidence of its truth.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“In spite of the air of fable ... the public were still not at all disposed to receive it as fable. I thence concluded that the facts of my narrative would prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)