Document Actions
Species Diversity Less Dramatic Than Believed
A study published in the current issue of Science challenges the long-held belief that diversity of marine species has been increasing continuously since the origin of animals. Dr. Thomas D. Olszewski, a geology and geophysics professor at Texas A&M University, has been a part of the international team that carried out this decade-long study, which concludes that most of the diversification occurred early on – relatively speaking.
A steep increase in the diversity was believed to have occurred only between 145 million and 60 million years ago. But many paleontologists were doubtful about the accuracy of this theory, which was derived using older methods. Olszewski explains that the older methods did not account for many important occurrences in the history of the Earth, including changes in the geography of Earth due to continental drift and variations in the state of global climate.
Collaborative
efforts of 35 researchers from the U.S., Germany, the UK, France and
Slovakia resulted in a more accurate interpretation of the prehistoric
data.