Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40397748›Full record

ArticleScience advances2025

The end-Cretaceous mass extinction restructured functional diversity but failed to configure the modern marine biota.

Stewart M Edie, Katie S Collins, David Jablonski

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Habitat-specific temporal variation in the pace of fish diversification.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
  2. Article
  3. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Stewart M EdieDepartment of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.ORCID 0000-0003-2843-7952
Katie S CollinsNatural History Museum, London, London SW7 5BD, UK.ORCID 0000-0002-3379-4201
David JablonskiDepartment of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, 5734 South Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-9163-8824

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The end-Cretaceous (K-Pg) mass extinction shows how large-scale taxonomic loss affects functional diversity over short and long timeframes. In a macroevolutionary model system, we find that, despite losing ~60% of genera and ~20% of family-level diversity, marine bivalves lost only ~5% of their functional diversity, inconsistent with random extinction. Even with evolutionary opportunities presented by a disrupted ecosystem, low-diversity groups prior to the extinction or those originating in the Cenozoic rarely reach higher ranks today, implying long-term diversity ceilings to certain ecological roles. Clades that survived the extinction tend to dominate functions today, 66 million years post-extinction, but both relative richness and phylogenetic structure of those functional groups have been significantly shuffled. Thus, neither the composition of the pre-extinction biota nor the set of taxa that survived the extinction fully accounts for the functional and phylogenetic structure of today's biota. The extinction disrupted Mesozoic biodiversity but did not fully determine the present-day configuration.

Indexed as

Aquatic OrganismsBiodiversityBiotaBivalviaExtinction, BiologicalAnimalsBiological EvolutionEcosystemFossilsPhylogeny

Identifiers

PMID40397748
PMCPMC12094223

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.