ArticleCommunications biology2021
A multiscale view of the Phanerozoic fossil record reveals the three major biotic transitions.
Article in Communications biology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Reefal regions were biodiversity hotspots throughout the Phanerozoic.Science advances · 2025Article
- Unravelling the drivers of marine biodiversity across the Phanerozoic.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Respiratory protein-driven selectivity during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2024Article
- What are patterns of rise and decline?Royal Society open science · 2023Review
- How predictable are mass extinction events?Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Article
- Late Holocene anthropogenic landscape change in northwestern Europe impacted insect biodiversity as much as climate change did after the last Ice Age.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Global diversity dynamics in the fossil record are regionally heterogeneous.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Article
- Increase in marine provinciality over the last 250 million years governed more by climate change than plate tectonics.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- A Bizarre Planthopper Nymph (Hemiptera: Fulgoroidea) from Mid-Cretaceous Kachin Amber.Insects · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The hypothesis of the Great Evolutionary Faunas is a foundational concept of macroevolutionary research postulating that three global mega-assemblages have dominated Phanerozoic oceans following abrupt biotic transitions. Empirical estimates of this large-scale pattern depend on several methodological decisions and are based on approaches unable to capture multiscale dynamics of the underlying Earth-Life System. Combining a multilayer network representation of fossil data with a multilevel clustering that eliminates the subjectivity inherent to distance-based approaches, we demonstrate that Phanerozoic oceans sequentially harbored four global benthic mega-assemblages. Shifts in dominance patterns among these global marine mega-assemblages were abrupt (end-Cambrian 494 Ma; end-Permian 252 Ma) or protracted (mid-Cretaceous 129 Ma), and represent the three major biotic transitions in Earth's history. Our findings suggest that gradual ecological changes associated with the Mesozoic Marine Revolution triggered a protracted biotic transition comparable in magnitude to the end-Permian transition initiated by the most severe biotic crisis of the past 500 million years. Overall, our study supports the notion that both long-term ecological changes and major geological events have played crucial roles in shaping the mega-assemblages that dominated Phanerozoic oceans.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.