Posts made in July, 2008

Extinction Events Are Declining to the Biblical Level

Posted on Jul 30, 2008 in Blog | 142 comments

New research may change conventional thinking on fossil diversity and extinction rates.1 John Alroy, a researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara, and 34 other scientists recently completed a 10-year study on the subject, published in the journal Science.2 Other scientists tend to count just the first and last occurrences of fossils, but Alroy and his colleagues undertook the monumental task of examining the over 280,000 known fossil records, with the help of the extensive and detailed web-based Paleobiology Database. They concluded that earth has experienced only three major...