A cool way to look at extinction

[Halichoeres]

In places that have been ocean the entire time (so, not too close to a spreading zone or a subduction zone), fish teeth have been accumulating for a hundred million years. This study takes advantage of that to try to estimate when major lineage of fishes appeared and disappeared. Using a sediment core (a column of the seafloor kept drilled out and kept intact), they find that the K-Pg extinction had little effect on overall diversity of the South Pacific, but did change how common some types were relative to others. However, there were major diversification events in the Paleocene, which is how we end up with so many marine fish species today.

A visual summary:




Open access! http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/285/1888/20181194